Why Is It So Hard to Believe In Other People’s Pain?

Van Gogh’s “Sorrowing Old Man.” (Wiki)

HOSTILE SUSPICION OF others, encompassing everything from the position of their mask to their stance on mandates, has marked this wretched pandemic from the start. Now, in perhaps the unkindest cut, suspicion is aimed at people with long Covid—the symptoms that may afflict as many as a third of those who survive a f…