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Slightly off topic. But what do you think of the "definition of recession"[1] debacle that is currently going on? Do you think this is similar to "changing the definition of a vaccine" that you mentioned?

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+of+recession&sour...

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I haven't followed it closely - but it does seem pretty similar. It's not like anything is 'triggered' when a recession is declared. And it's not like the economy is meaningfully better if you had quarterly growth of [-1%, -0.1%] vs. [-1.2%, 0.1%] -- even though by the two quarters rule, the first would be a recession and the second wouldn't.

It looks like NBER's definition of how they declare recessions has remained consistent, so I'd defer to them:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210103093754/https://www.nber....

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