Thursday's decision by the Reserve Bank to cut the official interest rate by .25 per cent for the second time in just over a fortnight is the clearest indication yet of the likely scale, severity and duration of Australia's economic crisis.
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It is the first time, since the Commonwealth assumed responsibility for its own currency in 1924, there has ever been an out-of-cycle interest rate intervention.
The nation is in uncharted economic waters.
The big takeaway from the announcement by RBA governor, Philip Lowe, was that the nation is in uncharted economic waters. The federal government, the RBA, treasury and the commercial banking sector are pulling out all the stops to keep Australia off the rocks.
The combination of an out-of-cycle rate cut with the first quantitative easing - which involves tipping money into the economy until the RBA can discern a pulse - in our history is absolutely unique.
As such, it has the potential to confuse working Australians, make life even more difficult for self-funded retirees, and possibly, admittedly counterintuitively, to spook investors, business owners and the finance sector.
That is because the sheer scale of this response, which also involved writing what was effectively a $90 billion cheque to the major lenders to underwrite loans to small and medium businesses, testifies to just how much strife the economy is in.
It didn't help that the decision came on the same day Qantas said it was going to lay off about two thirds of its 30,000 strong workforce, the Prime Minister said plans were well advanced for a second economic rescue package - even though the first one hadn't even been before the Parliament, and the strictest travel restrictions in our history were announced.
So, is this a case of "be afraid, be very afraid" or a seminal moment in the national saga which historians will look back on in years to come as a turning point in the fight to preserve our economy, our society and our way of life, while we concentrated on keeping people safe?
As is so often the case these days, it is probably a bit of both.
If things weren't so dire then neither the RBA or the government would need to make the dramatic decisions that were announced yesterday. But, and it is a big but, nobody watching this can doubt just how seriously our leaders take this crisis, or how determined they are to cushion Australians from the impact of what is happening here and overseas.
That said, Mr Lowe made it very clear the RBA had done about all it could. Rates cannot be cut any further; they are now on parity with the Bank of England and Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
He is hopeful the cumulative effect of interest rate reductions of 1.25 per cent over the past 12 months, and yesterday's moves to stave off a coronavirus induced credit squeeze will, in combination with further major stimulus from the federal government, be enough to support jobs, incomes and businesses.
If, as the Prime Minister has repeatedly said, Australia is to come back strongly once it reaches "the other side", then a lot more will need to be done to "socialise" the losses by workers in the aviation, travel and other affected industries.
While Qantas's decision to lay-off staff was defensible, it highlights the fact promising buckets of money to business doesn't guarantee the cash will be used to support workers.
Mr Lowe and Mr Morrison are right when they say Australia needs to build a bridge between the crisis and the recovery. Their challenge is to make it broad enough, and strong enough, for all who need to use it.
