Thread --

Pay attention to how the UK variant continues to be reported. Journalists are focusing on the public threat (you can get this within seconds of contact!) That may be true (though seconds seems too vague -- are you making out with someone or buying a distanced coffee?)

But *already* the threat is on individual daily acts. Shopping will be more unsafe! Walking on a crowded sidewalk will be more unsafe! And so on.

This isn't the real threat though. The real threat is what has been the same threat all along -- congregant settings.

So rather than being told that, as a shopper, you might now get COVID within seconds of close contact, we should be demanding to know: how are workers being kept safe? Because if it's **that** unsafe for us to go into a store, what does that mean for workers?

All of the stuff we have tried that doesn't work will especially not work with new variants that are more contagious. So rather than covering these new threats, journalists really need to be digging into workplace policies -- schools, manufacturing, residential facilities...

... where people have not been vaccinated, and so on. Any reporting about how you will now get COVID in a flash doing things that have up till now been safe, is a distraction from the real danger.