Bleak Economics 101 is a tough class. I appreciate the analysis and reasoning behind it, however harsh. You wrote

"unemployed people sitting at home doing day-trading — and they’re essentially playing the market based on pure sentiment."

A lot of personal behaviors and official policies seem "based on pure sentiment." People WANT things to be okay, so they pretend. That can't be sustainable, assuming we're subject to virological and economic realities. Both of those are subject to interpretation, but data like infection fatality rates and debt levels are sobering.