Rare to read positive news.
Instead, we get breathless headlines about shark attacks, which hardly ever happen. Our brains latch on to the wrong things most of the time. The news sucks because our brains suck. They're just giving us what we want.
The infant mortality in the USA certainly did not decline on every recent year[^1]. And the bad news is that this rate is extremely high for a rich country, with a value similar to Serbia, half more than the average rate in Europe[^2]. This last "news" was even reported under the title "Our infant mortality rate is a national embarrassment"[^3].
[^1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db09.pdf
[^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_an...
[^3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/29/our-i...
First site I checked shows that infant mortality in the US fell by about 50% from 1980-2010 (depending on category, but that's the trend in all categories). Someone did a paper on 1926 US infant mortality rates, and current rates are roughly 90% lower.
I'm not comparing to Serbia, or to last year. I'm comparing to decades ago. By focusing on trend rather than momentary detail, I'm seeing the positive where you're seeing the negative.