US life expectancy at birth

Americans died younger and ran fewer marathons at exactly the same moment, which on some level is just physics. Both curves dropped like a stone. Only one of them recovered.

Both cratered in 2020 for direct covid reasons. US life expectancy dropped by roughly 1.8 years — the steepest single-year fall since 1943 — as covid deaths overwhelmed the actuarial tables, while US marathon finisher counts collapsed because virtually every major race was cancelled. One measures who didn't get to stay; the other measures who didn't get to run. Both are 2020's ledger.

So the correlation is two very different tolls of the same year. The living ran less. The dying was not, for once, metaphorical.