Vegas mayor wants city re-opened, offered to be a COVID-19 ‘control group’

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Las Vegas mayor Carolyn Goodman has some crazy theories about re-opening her city, which is probably music to Dana White’s ears.

While she has no power to decide when her city goes back to normal due to stay at home orders from the governor of Nevada, Las Vegas mayor Carolyn Goodman wants things re-opened as soon as possible. And it seems that human life isn’t as important to her as getting the economy of her city moving again.

Goodman was recently interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and had all sorts of wild things to say about why she wouldn’t implement social distancing measures if the city did return to normal:

“I am not a private owner. That’s the competition in this country. The free enterprise and to be able to make sure that what you offer the public meets the needs of the public,” Goodman said.

“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.”

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman calls for businesses to reopen, while saying she won't provide social distancing guidelines on how to do so safely.

"They better figure it out. That's their job. That's not the mayor's job." https://t.co/lx4A6WuB0P pic.twitter.com/fEedR19LYX

— CNN (@CNN) April 22, 2020

She took it many steps further, indicating that she wanted the 900,000 unemployed residents back to work so badly that she actually offered to re-open the city and serve as a “control group” for COVID-19. Seriously.

“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 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,’” she said.

“We would love to be that placebo side so you have something to measure against.”

UFC president Dana White hasn’t commented on the things Goodman has said yet, but if she did have the power to re-open the city - however unwise that decision would be - you’d have to figure that he’d be down with it. It would allow him to run events in Vegas again, of course.

Luckily for everyone (except White and casino owners), she doesn’t have the ability to go through with her absurd little experiment.