What Happened Economic projections of the quarterly impact of COVID-19 on major economies are increasingly pessimistic with major downward revisions by forecasters. Some prominent predictions have been extant for only a matter of days as more bad news comes in on countries already past the peak of the epidemic (namely China and South Korea), as well those still suffering under national lockdowns. The International Monetary Fund, meanwhile, is catching up with private forecasters and now projects a global recession in 2020 that is "at least as bad as during the global financial crisis or worse." During the global financial crisis, world GDP growth fell from 4.3 percent in 2007 to 1.9 percent in 2008 and -1.7 percent in 2009 before eventually recovering to the pre-crisis level in 2010.