Keep well and keep hugging little Otto. A terrier will see you through a lot.

The full passage quoted in the main post follows, along with another quote from later in the novel.

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Translation from the German by John E. Woods
Vintage, Copyright 1995

…
For the notion of a “sanctified state”… was a fraud based on deception, on misplaced feelings, on a psychological blunder.
…
The sympathy that the healthy person felt for someone who was ill, which could intensify to the point of awe, since he was unable to imagine how he could ever bear such suffering himself – such sympathy was utterly exaggerated. The sick person had no right to it. It was based on a misperception, a failure of imagination, because the healthy person was attributing his own mode of experience to the sick person, the making of him, so to speak, a healthy person who had to bear the torments of sickness – a totally erroneous idea. The sick person was just that, sick, both by nature and in his mode of experience. Illness battered its victim until they got along with one another: his senses were diminished, there were lapses in consciousness, a merciful self-narcosis set in – all means by which nature allowed the organism to find relief, to adapt mentally and morally to its condition, and which the healthy person naïvely forgot to take into account. A perfect example with its two to Berkeley or pack up here, with their frivolity, stupidity, depravity, their aversion to becoming healthy again. In short, if the sympathetic or awestruck healthy person were to become sick himself, to lose his health, he would soon see that illness is a state in and of itself, though certainly not an honorable one, and that he saved draft saved draft had been taking it all too seriously.
Pages 442 – 443
…
Someone hearing about it later imagines how ghastly it must have been, but forgets that illness — and my present situation is more or less an illness — batters in its victim until they get along with one another. The senses are diminished, a merciful self narcosis sets in — those are the means by which nature allows the organism to find relief. And yet you have to fight against such things, because there are two sides to them. They’re really highly ambiguous. And your evaluation all depends on which side you view them from. They mean well, are a command scratch that blessing, really, as long as you don’t make it home; but they also mean you great harm and must be fought off, as long as there is any chance of getting home, which is my case, since I do not intend, my strongly pounding heart does not intend, to lie down and be covered by this stupid precise crystalometry.
…
Someone hearing about it later and matching is how ghastly it must have been, but forgets that illness — and my present situation is more or less an illness that is its victim until they get along with one another. The senses are diminished, a merciful self narcosis sets in — those are the means by which nature allows the organism to find relief. And you have to fight against such things, because there are two sides to them. They’re which side you few them from. They mean well, our blessing really as long as you don’t make it home. But they are also mean you create, they also mean your greatest harm and must be fought off as long as there is any chance of getting home, which in my case, since I did not attend my strongly pounding heart’s not intend to lie down and be covered by stupid precise crystalometry.
Page 475

Why do we want our adult world to operate like a high school social group with “like” and “unlike” tags on everything and everybody? Are our lives really that shallow? Are our lives really that fake?

Well…

…We live in a fake democracy that holds fake elections over fake issues so we can install fake governments who don’t actually wield the real power.

…Our fake economy is run by thieves who conjure fake financial “instruments” out of thin air while picking our pockets of anything of real value.

…We fake being an industrial powerhouse though we don’t produce much of anything, buying everything we need from somewhere else.

…We consume on orders from government economists and corporate carnie barkers so we can find fake fulfillment.

…We fight real wars for fake causes and then fake the costs in both lives and dollars. When we’re exhausted by them – or the con artists can’t fake out any more profits – we then fake victory and quit.

…We watch fake clowns throw tantrums about fake issues on fake news networks.

…We fake concern about the climate and hungry people and genocidal wars and endangered species and dwindling resources and infrastructure and global crowding and… and go check our Facebook page for relief.

…We fake belief in fake religions led by fake holy men.

…We fake awe and gratitude to the billionaire who gives a tiny fraction of one percent of his billions to schools just as an unflattering movie about him hits the screens.

…And… we fake agreeing that all this fakery makes perfect sense and can continue indefinitely.

Maybe we do need a fake society populated by fake friends. Real friends could be dangerous, after all. Real friends could accidentally say something that will bring our fake world down around our ears.

So, Viva Facebook! Yo, Zuckerberg! You’ve given us the fake intimacy we must have to round out our fake lifes. You’re the P.T. Barnum of the 21st century.

So you do your own website design for Left Coast Cowboys? I am impressed; yours is one of the best-designed sites out there. Congrats.