It may be what they should have done, but the effect was still inflationary. There is no free lunch.

It was inflationary but would spread out the pain over the recovery period after the crisis, the other option was to allow 100% of the pain to be felt immediately: economy shutting down, people losing their jobs, diminished household spending, less money circulating in the economy, businesses still running having fewer orders/customers, more people being laid off, all the way until the crisis passed.

Between the latter and the former I believe the former was a much smarter choice in the medium to long term.