However, if we are faced with an emergency (such as global pandemic), what's the alternative?
Governments should never hand out money ever, facing pandemic or not. That is the recipe for disaster in the future. Look at what most people did with the money they received. A lot of them invested it in something including bitcoin.
If they want to solve people's problem then solve the problem. For example we say people can't afford to pay for groceries during pandemic so open a line of credit for certain people in big grocery stores so that they can only go there and purchase groceries. Then the government can handle the payment with that store in some way without having to print more money. Like not taking taxes from them for a year.
Under a bitcoin standard, ~ Well, we allow markets to crash and let markets do their thing and things will naturally sort themselves out.
Keep in mind that you can't use the current market state as an argument. So far bitcoin market has been very tiny despite all the growth it had and prone to manipulation which is why the "crashes" happen. In a bigger market with mass adoption it won't happen like this ever.