We now know that millions of unemployed workers won’t be kicked off unemployment insurance (for at least 11 weeks) and will now get $300 every week in addition to their current state benefit; a vast majority of Americans will receive $600 direct payments from the government; and small businesses will have access to a modest new tranche of forgivable government loans.

After about six months of dire warnings from economists, business owners and the Federal Reserve that the economy was going to need a follow-up coronavirus relief package, Congress finally struck a last-minute $900 billion compromise over the weekend.

If this bill, which also includes new public health funding, were in response to a normal recession, its measures would be seen as a gargantuan effort. But in these times, several voices are reasonably arguing that it’s not enough, that it came too late and that it was driven by unsavory politics as much as it was by the needs of the population.

For a long while, many Republican senators in particular insisted that another large dose of aid either wasn’t needed, was too expensive — or that any further relief had to be paired with a broad “liability shield” for businesses. After all, they reasoned, the unemployment rate has been more than halved since the darkest days of April and is roughly what it was in late 2013. The Atlanta Federal Reserve recently estimated that G.D.P. growth, right now, could be as high as 11 percent at an annualized rate. The stock market is hitting record highs, and a couple of vaccines that promised to be startlingly effective are already being distributed.