“It is really tragic that the economic effects of this are very dramatic. Nothing like this has ever happened to the economy in our lifetimes,” Gates said. “But money, you know bringing the economy back and doing money, that’s more of a reversible thing than bringing people back to life. And so we’re going to take the pain in the economic dimension — huge pain — in order to minimize the pain in the disease and death dimension.”
While Trump isn't right, dismissing economic impacts of this is the same foolishness with a different political point. And no, handing out cash, which is far as I can tell is the only economic plan on the table anyone is considering is simply papering over the real problems.
Gates's equation of the economy with "money" is advocating for a terribly myopic point of view. Things being made, things being transported from where they're produced to where they're needed, the infrastructure, even the health care facilities and workers, and certainly not least, everyone else are also "the economy".
Any plan that doesn't address the short term health needs without also formulating a real plan to mitigate the economic fallout isn't a plan at all... it's simply closing one's eyes to the next crisis that we ourselves create.