>We confirm that both mortality and morbidity have a negative effect on GDP per capita growth. The effect of reducing mortality by 10 percent is that of adding at least 9.6 percentage points to GDP per capita growth over a period of about one quarter century, according to [13] bounding strategy.
Given how overwhelming majority of Covid deaths are elderly and sickly people, it is virtually guaranteed that on net, Covid deaths themselves are positive for the economy. The elderly overwhelmingly have their productive years behind them, and in the retirement, they mostly consume the resources instead of producing them. So no, Covid deaths are not bad for GDP. Situation would have been much different if the Covid victims were younger and healthier on average.
The quality sure can, if you can catch COVID and increase your mortality by going to the hospital.
We saw this in the early days of both Wuhan and later NYC. The beds overfilled, then the hallways, then it start spilling into surrounding streets, and then the armed forces had to be called in to set up makeshift hospitals.
If a hospital is saturated then by definition no more people can further enter the hospital.
There's a physical limit to how many people can fit inside a hospital, and that limit is the saturation point, at least in my definition.
It's possible that a mildly sick patient became a moderately sick patient because they received some disease while within the premises that they otherwise wouldn't have.
And in an extreme scenario, hospitals could possibly kick out moderately sick patients to accommodate even more severely sick patients, which could cause the former to spread diseases to otherwise healthy people. But this seems highly likely.
None of the makeshift military hospitals were actually used in NYC. They were only set up in the interest of preparedness, but they did not end up being necessary.
That's a general trend. Obviously it's not going to apply to every case. Usually, reducing mortality is about improving healthcare and nutrition, especially during the period your study tracked (1990-2014). Keeping working age people healthy is obviously going to increase their productivity. This is very different from shutting down an entire city due to a few dozen Covid cases.
>We confirm that both mortality and morbidity have a negative effect on GDP per capita growth. The effect of reducing mortality by 10 percent is that of adding at least 9.6 percentage points to GDP per capita growth over a period of about one quarter century, according to [13] bounding strategy.