Independent Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman has found herself in hot water recently for calling stay-at-home measures in Las Vegas "total insanity," and for a recent comment in an interview on MSNBC with host Katy Tur.
Goodman told Tur that they would worry about the facts of the virus after the pandemic subsides.
After Goodman said that only a marginal amount of Nevadans had died from the virus, Tur pointed out that the figure in itself was likely a demonstration of how stay-at-home measures are proving effective.
Goodman disagreed, saying that there wasn't a proper "control group" to chalk the minimal deaths up to safety measures recommended by health experts.
If you were expecting contrition from that cringeworthy interview, you won't find it in another interview Goodman gave soon after with CNN's Anderson Cooper.
Goodman brought up the so-called need for a control group yet again, except this time she volunteered her own constituents.
Watch below.
Goodman said:
"How do you know until we have a control group? We could be a control group. We offered to be a control group."
A stunned Anderson Cooper asked if he'd heard her correctly, before she continued:
"What I said was I offered to be a control group and I was told by our statistician you can't do that because people from all parts of southern Nevada to work in the city, and I said, 'Oh that's too bad.' Because I know that when you have a disease, you have a placebo that gets the water and the sugar and then you get those that actually get the shot. We would love to be that placebo [so] you have something to measure against."
It wasn't lost on Anderson Cooper that Las Vegas relies on tourism for much of its economy, and that reopening these businesses would also depend on tourists crossing state and international lines amidst a global pandemic.
Cooper said:
"You're talking about encouraging hundreds of thousands of people to come to Las Vegas ... Hundreds of thousands of people coming there in casinos, smoking, drinking, touching slot machines, breathing circulated air, doesn't that sound like a virus petri dish?"
Goodman's response?
"No what it sounds like, you're being an alarmist. I'm not. I've lived a long life. I grew up in the heart of Manhattan. I know what it's like to be on subways and in buses and crammed into elevators."
She conceded that she believed in social distancing measures but evaded the question of how to do that in a casino.
Goodman's latest appearance had people ready to fold.
The mayor's words were downright dangerous.
With Goodman at the helm, Las Vegas is going to need a large amount of luck.
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