Johnson's 7 Mile Bike Ride

Why is the media making such a fuss over Boris Johnson's seven mile bike ride?  For one thing, Johnson has had COVID, and must, therefore, have natural immunity against it.  So, its not as though he is at risk of either catching it, or spreading it to others.  He should really be free to do whatever he likes, on that basis.

But, why make a fuss about a seven mile bike ride anyway?  When I used to cycle to work, it was a seven mile ride in each direction, that I did everyday.  The fuss seems to be over whether this is "local", but I never considered my seven mile ride to work as anything other than being local.  That journey included some pretty significant hills, but only took around 20 minutes.  I'd say a 20 minute bike ride is pretty local.  Indeed, in the first lock down, everyone was entitled to take 1 hour of exercise a day - which in itself is a pretty arbitrary and ridiculous restriction - and so, a seven mile ride, or fourteen mile round trip only amounts to about 40 minutes, or just two-thirds of that original 1 hour per day allotment for exercise.

And, if you are on a bike, it is a pretty isolated form of exercise.  Even if someone is riding along with you, they are going to be at least a metre apart, and by the time you are travelling at around 15 m.p.h., in the open air, the chances of passing any virus one to another is pretty non-existent, as is the chance of passing it to anyone else.

Now, I have no time for Johnson, but if the media are going to choose a story to gnaw at, like a dog with a bone, surely this was not it.  What their picking away at this story amounts to is just an illustration of their pretty lazy journalism, based on trying to get cheap stories that they think opportunistically will chime with the biases of the public, always looking for an excuse to attack politicians and public figures, for some behaviour.  Its a soft target as against the media actually dealing with the real issues of the day in any kind of analytic and serious manner.