It's not just a pleasantry.
It's deeply insidious & in becoming the pleasantry now shared suggests that safety is the primary value we all share above all else.
Above autonomy, freedom, rationality, tolerance, seeking of joy and quality in life, safety is above all of these.
It also suggests safety is possible if you just do the right things. It's a religious belief we've all bought in to, that this nirvana of safety can be achieved if we all make sacrifices to the gods by doing largely irrelevant but signifynifying behaviours. We will be spared and granted safety.
This culture of 'safetyism' was developing before the pandemic. Jonathan Haidt wrote about in in the Coddling of the American mind and how it was making people fragile and undermining tolerance and mental health.
The pandemic has just put this phenomenon on speed.
We're in a mass psychosis.
And the fear of the god of safety is driving it.
And it's a lie, there is no safety in life. Whatever choice you make there is risk.