Jesus Christ. I thought the “we offer to be a control group” bit was bad enough (I mean, given that Las Vegas’s business involves tourists from elsewhere, who will get each other sick and bring the illness back to their communities, it’s pretty much the fucking opposite of a “control group”), but that interview snippet was nuts.
I mean, her whole “I’m from New York, where everyone was in close proximity, and we didn’t die” is like she doesn’t understand there’s a pandemic now, and that’s precisely why New York is so totally fucked right now.
The rest is the standard, completely insane, Republican line, though - we’ll just leave it up to private businesses to safeguard customers - or not, it’s up to them! Maybe a bunch of people will die, but that will weed out the businesses that are unsafe! (Or at least seem to be unsafe to customers, who have no means of determining anything in the absence of government safety guidelines.) It’s kind of brave that she’s sticking with that standard Republican line even in a situation that reveals it for the murderous nonsense that it is. She’s committed! Well, probably stupid rather than brave, but… she still deserves to be committed.
The only way to make it a “control group” is by making anyone going to Vegas, stay in Vegas. Otherwise they bring it home, spread it there, and it proves nothing. It’s not just that she’s a horrible person, she’s also a fucking moron.
Northern NV (Tahoe/Reno/Sparks/Carson City) is always sniping with southern NV (Vegas/Henderson) over which part of the state is better. When we up north say we are, this is one of the many reasons why. Vegas is awful, and she’s the living example of it.
Yes, shockingly enough, someone willing to risk the health of millions for financial gain and with no ability to calculate the actual financial outcomes of her proposal is also bad at experimental design. If there weren’t so many more pressing problems, this might be a nice teaching moment about how to set up an appropriate control group.
That’s a great point! A good follow up question would’ve been, “well, if you haven’t noticed, NYC is going through some hard times. Would you be willing to go there now, and ride on those subways now?”
Then make her.
a) Anybody can leave before the “experiment” starts, so that participation is voluntary; this would have to include monetary compensation for being driven from your home, obviously, so LV would need federal subsidies to pay them all; the bio-experiment must be federalized. Or even globalized, no doubt Germany and Japan need this data, too.
b) Nobody can leave after the experiment starts, since they would be disease vectors to other locales, and even if there were a test/quarantine way out, it would spoil the statistics to have people leave to do their dying somewhere else.
If it were only that simple. Presuming of course this crackpot Mayor was elected by a democratic process. Trump, despite losing all the states electoral college votes, got 45.5% of the popular vote in Nevada, to Clinton’s 47.9%. That’s razor thin by any standard. So a lot more people “voted for this asshole” than we would like to admit, including (astonishingly!) people of color. And then there’s the voter turnout problem, although higher on average in Nevada, countrywide one of the lowest in the developed world. Blaming Trump and the GOP is only scratching the surface. And blame is THEIR game, and they’ve perfected it well, original snowflakes that they are. There are multiple, deep systemic issues at play which must be understood and addressed. Surely understanding what motivates people to vote Republican in the first place, or what keeps them from voting at all is key. Peace.
