The fact that it's impossible to make good decisions doesn't change the fact that a decision has to be made, nonetheless. This isn't a computer game where there's an answer to the puzzle from the designer, where the COVID-19 monster shows up but it has a weak spot on the back of its tail where you can land a critical hit. There is no good solution. Our job is to find the least-bad one.

I think there's a good argument that yes, forgiving all of those rents and paying for the pensioners' pensions is less bad than not doing anything. (We might also want to consider why pensioners are living off of complex financial relationships instead of, like, cash, and whether that risk/reward tradeoff was good for society, but we won't be able to see the results of any changes we make for another generation or two.)

I do think that, yes, "we will just give you money" (and "we will increase taxes on people who won't get evicted if we do") is a fine answer too.

But also, the amount of benefit that any intervention can have drops rapidly by the month. Every time rent payments (or mortgages, or pension-funded bills) are due, there's a new batch of people who can't pay it. A bad answer today, and maybe a workaround for second-order effects later, is a lot better than a better answer in three months.