In Germany, and other European countries, there is a tool called "Kurzarbeit". It allows a company to reduce the workforces hours and temporarily cut pay. The state supports it with tax breaks. The result is that a worker only works i.e. 60%, income drops to 80% (bc of the tax breaks) and the company saves a lot of money.
The key point: people keep their jobs AND companies keep their trained staff. So when the crisis is over, they are ready to ramp up again. Also, since people keep their jobs, consumption does not drop that low.
This helped the Germany economy massively to recover from the 2008 crisis.
Not sure if it would work the same way for all parts of the economy, but it definitively works for the manufacturing industry.
I'm German, so I might be biased but I think Kurzarbeit (for our non-german speakers, it is pronounced: koorts-arbite [0]) (short-time working) is as close as possible to an economic wonder weapon during a recession:
People are still paid, companies do not have the full burden of wages to pay and especially do not have to go through hiring and training new employees after the episode when they want to ramp up again. It's an awesome tool to deal with a temporary situation and particularly aimed at making recovery from the situation easier (by riding it out instead of first succumbing to it and then having to get back on the feet).
Same in the Netherlands. There was always something similar, but as part of a stimulus package for the Corona crisis the government will pay part of the wages for companies that have 20%+ revenue loss, and this scales up to 90% wage payment for 100% revenue loss.
The key point: people keep their jobs AND companies keep their trained staff. So when the crisis is over, they are ready to ramp up again. Also, since people keep their jobs, consumption does not drop that low.
This helped the Germany economy massively to recover from the 2008 crisis.
Not sure if it would work the same way for all parts of the economy, but it definitively works for the manufacturing industry.