Would the lock-down induced economic contraction be a prelude to a major depression?

The coronavirus or Covid-19 epidemic has stricken the imagination The fear of a total collapse of advanced countries health system gave birth to what has been called the lock-down of major economies These measures also have a cost Obviously, the longer would the lock-down situation go, the higher its economic cost But, at some point, we could have some irreversible consequences as the number of Small or Very Small enterprises going bankrupt could reach a critical mass One could then ask the question to know if the health emergency linked to epidemic is not paving the way to major an economic crisis, one that could dwarf all other post-1945 crises The end of the containment is not to simply jump-start the economy The level of depression experienced during the lock-down situation would be a serious indicator to estimate the duration of the return to a pre-Covid situation The difficulty in initially estimating the extent of this crisis can be understood However, various governments clearly underestimated the gravity of the situation, like the French and the Italian ones, until the beginning of April 2020 They also continue for some, like the French government, to underestimate the extent of the recession We have attempted in this text to produce realistic estimates and in the subsequent paper we are comparing our estimates with others, be they produced by public bodies or by private ones If the drop in production figures is actually closer to the level of the 1929 crisis, what is new is the speed with which production is almost at a standstill As with the 1929 depression the number of changes, for the better or for the worse, is to be extremely important