Will the coronavirus pandemic cause a major global depression and deflation?

Unfortunately, at this time the specter of something like this happening cannot be entirely ruled out at this time! Published economic growth forecasts of OECD countries indicate a potential drop of 5-10% or more. We may not have seen the worst yet. The economic outlook is not good! 

Our elected politicians, many of them lifetime career politicians, were all to eager to willfully sabotage our economies to fight the highly exaggerated danger of a fairly harmless virus! They allowed themselves to be mislead by so called experts! They also failed to rely more on common sense and reason! When more evidence to the contrary became available, they also failed almost completely to correct their disastrous actions! Hopefully, lessons will be learnt!

The latest second quarter GDP numbers coming out of communist China need to be taken with a significant grain of salt.

The indicators supporting this dim view are:

1. Major export countries like Germany reporting dramatically reduced exports for the first half of 2020
2. The all important global tourism industry is stagnating as consumers reconsider their travel plans
3. Consumers in Western countries generally have increased savings and reduced consumption not least because of high unemployment 
4. The presidential election in the U.S. in November, which will determine if a pro free market incumbent president will continue a second term in office or whether a leftward lurched anti business challenger (a typical lifelong career politician) wins. If latter wins and the Dimocratic Party maintains or even increases their position in the U.S. Congress, then this will be depressing as far as the economy is concerned
5. Their are reports that general price movements indicate that a perhaps prolonged deflation is more likely than a steady increase of price levels 
6. Government debt and business debt is increasing at huge amounts thanks also to the insanely and recklessly low interest rates
7. Current data on international business demography (creation and closure of businesses) is hard to come by, but quite possibly the data for the first half of 2020 are not good

Here is link to the June 2020 OECD Outlook