During a contentious appearance this week on CNN, Mayor Carolyn Goodman of Las Vegas, Nevada, suggested that residents of her city could constitute some kind of experiment to find out the effects of lifting Coronavirus-induced social distancing measures, no matter the illnesses and deaths that may ensue. Workers’ groups in the city have now condemned Goodman’s idea of turning the city into some kind of “petri dish” in order to placate casino bosses worried about losing profits. Money isn’t the only point of concern here — lives are also on the line as the U.S. fast approaches the count of 50,000 deaths from the Coronavirus this Thursday afternoon.
D. Taylor, who serves as president of the hundreds of thousands of members-strong hospitality workers’ union UNITE HERE, insisted that the mayor’s comments were “one of the worst things I’ve heard,” adding:
‘Nobody wants people to go back more than I do, but everyone wants to go back to a safe and secure workplace and not be an experiment in a petri dish.’
In a Wednesday statement, local Culinary Union Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Argüello-Kline added:
‘In Las Vegas, we’ve had 11 Culinary Union members die because of COVID-19. Health and safety is our priority –– workers and guests have to be safe. We want people back to work, but it has to be safe and secure and we don’t want workers to be part of an experiment.’
And a representative for Nevada healthcare workers’ union SEUI Local 1107 added:
‘To suggest that we should endanger more lives by treating Las Vegas like a guinea pig in some wild experiment betrays a profound level of ignorance of the current situation.’
Goodman had claimed to CNN host Anderson Cooper that her city “would love to be that placebo side so you have something to measure against,” adding when asked how she’d enforce any continued social distancing measures at all if the city reopens:
‘That’s up to them to figure out. I don’t own a casino.’
And yet, Goodman is talking about orchestrating the city’s reopening anyway, even while she implicitly admits that she doesn’t actually have the relevant on-the-ground knowledge or experience to lead a reopening in a safe manner.
Goodman is not the only leader who has offered increasingly unsettling comments in service of the idea that the U.S. economy should reopen now no matter the potential illnesses and deaths that result from a further spread of the virus. Texas’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick recently made the wild assertion that there are “more important things than living,” including, he insisted, protecting the economy and American way of life or whatever.
California Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu replied:
‘Texas Lt Gov Dan Patrick is certainly entitled to hold ridiculous opinions. However, the first duty of government is to protect the lives of its people. If @DanPatrick doesn’t understand that, then he shouldn’t be in government.’
Texas Lt Gov Dan Patrick is certainly entitled to hold ridiculous opinions. However, the first duty of government is to protect the lives of its people. If @DanPatrick doesn’t understand that, then he shouldn’t be in government. https://t.co/7osUvtxgNH
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) April 21, 2020
President Trump has offered support to those with these extreme views. Recently, he even tweeted that his followers should “liberate” certain states where authorities have imposed stay-at-home orders, although these orders are in line with directives from his own administration.
