> In my opinion, it would have been a lot more effective to give money directly to people, then let them figure out where and how they need to spend it to get through the crisis. Businesses would then adapt accordingly to survive, or fail if they couldn't. But at least then most people would be ok.
I'm in agreement with you for financial crises in general (with caveats), but this doesn't apply here. The usual ability of individual spenders to direct their money to the businesses that they'd like to sustain is limited, because the nature of the pandemic response has caused an oddly-shaped crater in consumer demand. As a simple example: deferring teeth cleaning for a couple of months is an extremely rational decision right now, but under your plan, every dentist in the country would go out of business. I don't think this implies that dentists are non-essential, in the same way that sharp drops in airline and public transit usage don't render those services inessential.
Like a chemical compound, a lot of the value of a business is contained not in the capital or human capital per se, but in the connections between its constituent parts: a business is nothing more than a structure that produces utility for the landlord, the business owner, the employees, the suppliers, the customers, etc. If you suddenly bring that machine to a hard stop, all of those actors get hurt (the employees often most of all).
The GP comment is obviously correct that businesses are not entities whose welfare we need to focus on maximizing as a terminal goal. But they are critical structures through which the welfare of pretty much every citizen is maximized, not just business owners. In the same way that sustaining police departments or hospitals isn't motivated at saving those institutions per se, but at sustaining the value they produce for citizens, sustaining businesses is part of how we sustain the welfare of every citizen.
This is why the SBA/PPP are so valuable: they provide relief for those who would otherwise be laid-off, but do so in the form of salaries from a business that otherwise would have gone under. Not only are individual citizens able to keep paying their bills, but they're able to retain their relationship with their employer (losing a job has far more costs than just the foregone salary). And obviously this is in conjunction with things like the expansion in unemployment benefits, so that those who have been laid off and are unconnected to a business have a safety net as well.