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You can't simply "protect the salaries", government isn't some omnipotent god who simply needs to do some hand-waving to fix things. There isn't a fountain of wealth that the government is hiding from us! You can print more money (often bad), or make businesses pay salaries while taking no revenue (also bad)

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I know that this is a shocking idea, but you can, in extraordinary circumstances, use a variety of government measures, including dipping into reservers to ensure that people don't starve and that businesses aren't forced to lay off people that they will need when businesses restart.

Yes, government isn't some omnipotent god but neither is it some helpless pathetic entity that can't sort things out at a time of extraordinary crisis.

> dipping into reservers

My assumption is that governments are taking on some sort of debt here.

When you control the mint, it's basically the same thing. Doubly so when its the USD and the rest of the world has exactly the same problem you do, so you hardly need to worry about the depreciation vs other currencies.

(Even if you hardly needed to before just by sheer size.)

That assumption is incorrect for sovereign currencies issuers (like the US, UK, Japan). They would just issue bonds, which is not at all like you or I taking out a loan.

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