Most businesses while closed could have very minimal costs.

Let's take a restaurant. Few people dining, so minimal labor costs, reduced deliveries, so minimal cost of goods/foods. But they still have enormous rent costs.

My guess is that 90% of businesses could have gone on outside, easily weathered this storm, and picked right back up where they left off if we had simply paused rent payments. This would have meant property owners wouldve been short money to pay mortgages, so we simply hold off on mortgage payments. Banks can weather that without issue, or receive govt loans to tide them over and structure of the economy is ready to pick up where it left off.

A similar solution in residential housing could've also worked well.