Like the scene in Aliens when the sentinel guns run through virtually all their ammunition before the monsters retreat, the Reserve Bank has essentially exhausted its first magazine and has reached for the back-up.
After expending almost all of its conventional monetary policy bullets by knocking the official cash rate down to a rock bottom 0.25 per cent, the central bank has gone back to armoury and loaded up with a new collection of weapons.
These include giving banks access to $90 billion or more of low-cost funds so they can provide cheap loans, particularly if they are lending to small and medium businesses.
The central bank is also trying to support credit by buying government bonds. These purchases will help hold bond rates down, encouraging banks holding bonds to seek better returns by lending to business and consumers instead.
These are widely seen as sensible and substantial measures that have been backed up by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg's decision to inject $15 billion to support lending and the banking regulator's move to relax bank capital requirements.
RBA governor Philip Lowe has made it clear that the central bank is in this for the long haul, stating that there will be no increase in the cash rate until "progress is being made towards full employment" and inflation is sustainably in the 2 to 3 per cent target band.
Given that unemployment is expected to spike in coming weeks and months as severe measures to contain the COVID-19 outbreak take effect, full employment and health inflation seem a long way off at this stage.
The central bank's relief that the federal government has finally begun to inject some stimulus into the economy is palpable.
As Dr Lowe put it in his statement announcing the rate cut, the RBA's action "complements the welcome fiscal response from governments in Australia".
For much of the past year the RBA has played a virtually a lone hand at the national level in trying to prop up activity while the government was fixated on delivering a budget surplus.
With last week's initial $17.6 billion stimulus package from Scott Morrison the country finally had both arms of policy - fiscal and monetary - pulling in the same direction.
The government is under pressure to come up with a much more substantial collection of measures in its next stimulus move.
Economists reckon it will need to be at least 4 per cent of GDP (around $80 billion) to make a difference. This is about the same proportionate size as the package announced by the New Zealand government earlier in the week.
Size is one thing, speed is another.
The $750 cash payments promised by the government to pensioners, veterans, the unemployed and other welfare recipients will not start flowing until the end of March, when many small and medium businesses are feeling the pinch right now.
There are also questions whether measures like expanded instant asset write-offs are delivering the best bang for the buck. Currently, with uncertainty so high, plenty of businesses will be keen to hang on to cash rather than splashing it on a new computer or work vehicle.
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Payroll tax relief and other measures being applied by state governments are helping, and prominent economist Stephen Koukoulas thinks a means-tested mortgage holiday for home buyers has merit, provided it is underwritten by the government rather than loaded on to the banks.
Everyone's confidence has been shaken by the virus outbreak. Just a glance at empty supermarket shelves or plunging stockmarkets will tell you that.
A recession appears inevitable.
But the key to how well the country emerges from the crisis will be measured not just in lives lost and saved, but in how many have managed to hold on to their job.
