If they had wanted to avoid a contagion, they could have just given a 6-month 100% deposit backstop to all the other banks, and let SVB play out naturally. But then the VCs might have lost a little money.
Not just the VCs though and therein lies the rub. You'd have to start differentiating between various kinds of account holders and that doesn't really work beyond the 'private individual/business' classification.
