The major medical news of this past week, certainly grim and described in many outlets as “staggering,” was the reported decline in average U.S. life expectancy since the onset of the COVID19 pandemic. The decrease is the largest seen since the devastation of World War II (although roughly ten times less than that of the 1918 pandemic), and resets trends in mean life expectancy in the US back 15 years, to where things stood in 2006.