Coronavirus: Drop in US Life Expectancy

One knew that a story about a decline in US life expectancy due to COVID-19 would eventually come out. NPR (Jul 21) reports:

Life expectancy in the United States declined by a year and a half in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says the coronavirus is largely to blame.

COVID-19 contributed to 74% of the decline in life expectancy from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77.3 years in 2020, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.

Since a significant percentage of deaths also occurred in 2021, one would have to assume that there won't be a jump back up to 78.8 years in 2021.

We know that deaths were concentrated in older Americans. I wonder how much further life expectancy would have fallen if deaths were more spread out across age groups.

The article has this comparison with other countries:

Just last month a study published in the British Medical Journal looked at life expectancy data for the U.S. and compared it with life expectancy data from 16 other high-income countries. The study found the U.S. decrease in life expectancy from 2018 to 2020 was 8.5 times greater than the average decrease in peer countries.

Hmm, does this make sense? Mexico had similar deaths from COVID-19 as the United States. Italy had more deaths than the United States. Even the country this journal is located in, the UK, has similar deaths as the United States. Maybe Europe also aligns with the United States and that the real comparison should be an Asia baseline (though in 2021 I might expect that India would see a larger decline in life expectancy than the United States).