Huge drop in U.S. life expectancy in pandemic

Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped one year during the first half of 2020.

That's according to preliminary estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"While that doesn't sound like a whole lot at a population level, this is a huge decline. And it's not something that we've seen. And we've got to go back to World War II in the 1940s to find a decline like this in the past," said Robert Anderson, who oversees mortality statistics for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Life expectancy is how long a baby born today can expect to live, on average.

In the first half of last year, that was 77.8 years for Americans, down one year from 78.8 in 2019.

"What is really quite striking in these numbers is that they only reflect the first half of the year ... I would expect that these numbers would only get worse," said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a health equity researcher and dean at the University of California, San Francisco.

Minorities suffered the biggest impact.

Black people lost nearly three years and Hispanics nearly two years.

"Throughout the entire pandemic, what we have seen time and time again is that our Black, Latino, indigenous populations have really borne the brunt of this endemic," Bibbins-Domingo said.

She added,"we see that they are at increased risk of exposure because they are oftentimes in front-line, front-facing work, oftentimes low-wage work without the additional resources to protect themselves. They're often living in environments where they are more likely to transmit the virus to others who live with them. They're oftentimes living in congregate living settings that put people at risk for higher transmission."

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