The body of this article contradicts the headline.

The headline makes it seem like droves of women who've never done "sex work" before are now turning to it coz COVID-19 has closed off all their other employment, earning and income options and pushed them into "desperate poverty."

But the article itself is mainly about women who've been doing sex work for many years - two decades in the case of one of the two women quoted and featured - and who say that conditions created by the COVID-19 crisis have made it much more difficult for them and other longstanding sex workers to make decent money from sex work.

One of these women, who serves as an organizer and official for/of a prostitutes union, claims that during the COVID-19 crisis lots of women with no history of doing sex work have been calling to inquire about the possibility of going into it in order to make ends meet. But beyond that claim, no evidence is given that this is actually true - or that the majority of the women supposedly calling to inquire about going into sex work end up actually taking it up.

Also, the article makes it sound as though in the UK there has been no government financial support for people affected by COVID-19, and that the UK also has no welfare programs that women and especially women with children could avail themselves of that predated COVID and which have remained in place throughout the crisis. I understand that austerity, the new Universal Credit system and new rules around child benefits and tax credits have left many women with and without children worse off than they were when the UK's benefits system was more generous. But it's not true that there is no longer any government assistance in the UK the way this article pretends. Compared to the US, the financial supports available in the UK are generous. In the UK, housing is a right, and there's free universal health care too.

Just goes to show that the Independent is a rag just out for the clicks.