By Chuck Muth
Back in mid-April, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman called on Nevada Gov. Steve von Sisolak to START the process of a controlled, responsible re-opening of Nevada’s economy.
She referred to the discombobulated blanket #SisolakShutdown as “total insanity.” She was right.
Had we started the process back then, we wouldn’t be where we are today under the threat of closing up again. The COVID-19 challenges we’re facing now would have been addressed over two months ago. We would have already taken corrective measures.
Make no mistake: The COVID threat was with us in April, is with us now and will still be with us six months from now. The governor’s fiddling and delay has only extended the recovery period and commensurate pain. And, um, since the threat of the virus was still with us when von Sisolak allowed a partial re-opening, wasn’t he using our entire state as a “control group”?
Where’s all the yelping and kvetching from the same Branch COVIDians who attacked Mayor Goodman over this? Another thing… Mayor Goodman, in an April interview with CNN’s Anderson “Pretty Boy” Cooper, accurately noted that it would be up to individual business owners to take various precautionary safety measures upon re-opening and that the public and the market would then decide which to patronize.
And lo and behold, that turned out to be true, too. The Las Vegas Review-Journal published a story today detailing the different levels of COVID prevention different casino operations are taking. As reported, under von Sisolak’s Phase II partial re-opening…
“There are no standards for how, or even if, Las Vegas casinos check their customers for fevers to try to halt the spread of the coronavirus. Every operator has a different procedure.”
For example… “This means that, while downtown’s Fremont was limiting its number of entrances and greeting every customer at the door with a temperature screening, the Four Queens across the street had every door wide open and wasn’t checking visitors.
“On the Strip, the MGM and Caesars properties weren’t alone in just screening hotel guests. That also was the case at The Strat, Sahara, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and Treasure Island. …
“At Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, as well as The Venetian and Palazzo, guests can be screened several at a time, usually without slowingdown, by thermal imaging cameras that give the operators a ‘Predator’-style look at everyone who enters.
“Boyd properties – including Aliante, the Cannery, Gold Coast, The Orleans and Suncoast — and Station resorts — including Green Valley Ranch, Red Rock, Santa Fe and Sunset — take more of a stop-and-wait
approach. …
“Downtown, the California and the D rely on machines that scan the inside of guests’ wrists, with the latter registering skin temperatures in the dangerously low 90s. The Plaza offered the choice of presenting your forehead or wrist, although if your forehead ran warm, your wrist needed to be scanned anyway.”
So once again we see that Mayor Goodman was right on the money. Gov. von Sisolak is now doing the exact same things Madam Mayor called for in April… just two months and a lot of unnecessary additional pain later.
Where does she go to get her apology?
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Chuck Muth is president of CitizenOutreach.org and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com. He blogs at MuthsTruths.com. His views are his own.
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