Americans face a 3-year loss to their life expectancy at birth, the second-steepest drop over the last two decades. This was the finding of a report published in August by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. This echoes a latest health indicator report by the OECD, which found the drop in life expectancy to be "particularly large" in the U.S. compared to other developed countries. What exactly does this mean? How much was Covid-19 to blame? Why is American life expectancy fluctuating? And how severe is the situation?