Las Vegas mayor Carolyn Goodman wants casinos to reopen and questions the effectiveness of social distancing in car crash interview

Las Vegas mayor Carolyn Goodman wants to see her city lift its coronavirus lockdown laws, but has absolutely no plan on how.

The 81-year-old independent mayor told CNN host Anderson Cooper she’d “love everything open” and refused to listen to him explain why it would be a bad idea.

To date, Nevada has recorded 163 deaths due to Covid-19 and almost 4,000 confirmed cases.

Cooper argued social distancing in the city is the reason why these numbers are lower than other states in the country, asking:

Hasn’t it been that because of social distancing that the numbers have been what they are?

Mayor Goodman responded:

How do you know until we have a control group? We offered to be a control group. Anybody who knows anything about statistics knows that for instance, you have a vaccine and you give the real vaccine…

Cooper interjected:

You’re offering the citizens of Las Vegas to be a control group to see if your theory on social distancing works or doesn’t work?

Immediately on the back foot, Mayor Goodman responded:

No, wrong. Absolutely wrong. Don’t put words in my mouth.

Continuing to confirm everything Cooper asked her to clarify on, Goodman said:

What I said was I offered to be a control group and I was told by our statistician that you can’t do that because people from all parts of Southern Nevada come in to work in the city and I said 'Oh, that’s too bad' because I know, 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 side so that you have something to measure against.

Downplaying the effect of the pandemic in Las Vegas, Mayor Goodman repeated that there are 2.3 million people living in Southern Nevada and 150 people had died.

Later in the interview, Mayor Goodman accused Cooper of being an “alarmist” for suggesting opening up casinos would be disastrous because people would be “smoking, drinking, touching slot machines, breathing circulated air and then returning home”.

Mayor Goodman said “of course” there should be social distancing but when it comes to opening up casinos:

That’s up to [casino owners] to figure out. I don’t own a casino [and] and I don’t know anything about building a casino.

Then came Cooper’s scathing critique of the Las Vegas mayor’s argument:

Wait a minute, you’re the mayor of Las Vegas and you want casinos to be open, even though you have no authority – thankfully – over casinos but you have no responsibility about how that would be done safely?

Goodman responded:

No… I’m not a private owner of a hotel… that’s the competition in this country. The free enterprise and to be able to make sure what you offer the public meets the needs of the public. Right now, we’re in a crisis health-wise and so for a restaurant to be open or a small boutique to be open, they better figure it out. That’s their job, that’s not the mayor’s job.

The public’s response to Mayor Goodman’s interview was swift on social media, with many calling her views “ignorant”.

Clearly, she has mis-read the room.