# Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Thread - 2021 Breaking News **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [January 1, 2021, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2021-breaking-news/929428 "2021-01-01T08:03:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 189
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2021, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2021-breaking-news/929428/189 "2021-01-17T22:39:28Z")
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#): > > US life expectancy has declined by 1.13 years to 77.48 years I can’t be bothered to wade through that entire PNAS paper, but it’s very unclear to me what exactly this could mean. Life expectancy for who, exactly? The abstract and a table halfway through say they are talking about life expectancy _at birth_. I don’t see how they could possibly make any reliable inference about the effect of COVID on life expectancy for someone born today, but surely there’s a good chance that it’s negligible once we have vaccines and herd immunity. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2021-breaking-news/929428)._