A study done on loneliness, and done long before COVID was on our radar, provides some fascinating information about the experience of loneliness.  Some studies are quite large.  This one, done in 2018, was gigantic.

There was a time when news basically covered, well, news.  And it came in the form of large sheets of paper (as it still does) filled with stories of the previous 24 hours or several days. But what is determined to be news or newsworthy has changed.  If the story doesn’t generate fear or anger it tends to stay on the sidelines.