- Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman told MSNBC that hospitality businesses should be allowed to reopen.
- “Assuming everyone’s a carrier,” Goodman said that the open businesses that generate infections will then be closed again.
- MSNBC’s Katy Tur called the mayor’s idea “modern day survival of the fittest.”
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Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman thinks that businesses in the city that want to reopen should be able to.
That way, those businesses that see outbreaks can just be closed again at a later date.
The mayor, who doesn’t have authority over the Vegas strip, shared her idea with MSNBC’s Katy Tur in a phone interview on Tuesday.
“Assume everybody is a carrier,” the mayor told Tur. “And then you start from an even slate. And tell the people what to do. And let the businesses open and competition will destroy that business if, in fact, they become evident that they have disease, they’re closed down. It’s that simple.”
Tur, who was apparently dumbfounded by the comments, called the plan “modern day survival of the fittest.”
Goodman has been a vocal critic of business closures. She previously came under fire for calling the shutdowns “insanity.”
Matthew ‘Matt’ Maddox, CEO Wynn Resorts, said in an op-ed “that opinion has no basis in science or data and should be ignored.”
Stephen Cloobeck, CEO of Diamond Resorts International, appeared in Tur’s Tuesday segment in a fiery video message.
“Mayor Goodman is the mayor of Las Vegas downtown, she has nothing to do with the strip and we’re sick and tired of hearing this,” Cloobeck said.
Goodman tried to explain her thoughts to Tur, and referred to hospitality workers who are struggling to feed their families. She also made reference to lesser infectious diseases that have come and gone.
“We’ve survived the West Nile and SARS, Bird Flu, E. coli, swine flu, the Zika virus,” Goodman told Tur, who quickly interjected.
“They were not as contagious and they did not spread as far as this disease has already done,” Tur said.
As of Wednesday morning, there were more than 826,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US and more than 45,000 deaths. In Nevada, there have been nearly 4,000 cases and 163 deaths.
Goodman’s comments come as protesters around the United States hold rallies calling for the end of lockdowns and restarting the economy.
