I ran across a great lead-in to life expectancy explanations: “One of the difficulties, of course, is that “life expectancy” is a concept most people do not understand to begin with, but it’s in units they’re familiar with – years.”
Her article includes some good graphs, and is well worth reading. She includes a good description of crude death rates and age-adjusted death rates:

This next graph comes from Mary Pat Campbell and she has an article that needs a click and a read.

In this article she points out the changes in life expectancy.

Then she shares what occurred with the Spanish Flu epidemic:

This graph demonstrates what we have encountered during the pandemic:

I think keeping up on her posts is likely worthwhile. She does a great job on her specialty aspects of demography. Somewhere in her posts, she explained that a man has to live to be 69 years old before he is looking at a 1% chance of dying in a given year. She’s good, and worth reading.