As someone with an MA in econ, most of what you've said here is false. While two quarters of negative growth is often used as an informal measure of recession,

As someone with an MA in econ, most of what you've said here is false. While two quarters of negative growth is often used as an informal measure of recession, the NBER definition is the one that has been used in the US for quite some time by economists. Historically, here in the US we haven't used the Egyptian definition of recession when talking about the US economy, so what you think about their definition is irrelevant. That isn't to say that we're not currently in a recession, but economists don't know yet, and neither do you.