With Las Vegas Set to reopen casinos on June 4, 2020, other businesses remain closed. The Governor of Nevada, Steve Sisolak set the date (on a tentative basis) after what has been reported as “two weeks of continued decreases” in new COVID-19 diagnoses and hospitalizations.
Reopening Nevada & COVID-19 Case Numbers
At the time of this writing, Worldometers.info reports Nevada with having some 7,879 total cases, but following a long Memorial Day weekend with fireworks shows, open beaches, and a nation-wide lack of social distancing over the holiday it remains to be seen whether June 4 is the date when casinos will actually open.
Las Vegas Casinos And Phased Reopening
In states like Nevada, re-opening feels inevitable in spite of warnings from health experts that a second peak of the coronavirus outbreak is likely if Americans refuse to wear personal protective equipment (PPE), refuse to socially distance themselves at six feet or better, and refuse to stop gathering in large numbers.
Why is Las Vegas set to reopen casinos and restaurants while other businesses remain closed? Part of this move has to do with phased reopening, which is designed to allow businesses to partially reopen and begin to recover from the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic, but without fully reopening and exposing millions to potential health hazards that still have no preventive cure or vaccine.
Technically speaking, a phased reopening makes sense if and when the appropriate conditions are present. A declining rate of infections, deaths, and hospitalizations overall is crucial to reopening, but many states have attempted to partially open back up without fully meeting these guidelines.
What We Know Versus What We Do Not Know
The problem with doing this involves what former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described (in a war-on-terror context rather than a COVID-19 context) as follows:
“…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones”.
And the fact of the matter is, while Vegas Casinos set to reopen casinos, even with aggressive social distancing, disinfectant measures, and restrictions on how many can gather at the card table, the roulette wheel, or the slot machines, there are plenty of unknowns regarding the coronavirus outbreak in America. And there is still NO VACCINE at the time of this writing. There may not be a vaccine in 2020 in spite of the optimism of some in Washington D.C.; science cannot be rushed.
Protect Yourself
What can you do to protect yourself when businesses begin reopening once more? It’s very simple:
- Avoid crowds at all costs; COVID-19 spreads through not just via coughing, but also by simple exhalation. The droplets in a person’s breath can spread COVID-19.
- Wear a mask for the protection of others; you don’t know if you are a carrier of the disease or not until you are tested or develop symptoms. You can infect people EVEN IF YOU HAVE NO SYMPTOMS.
- In spite of what some may report, it is crucial to avoid touching contaminated or potentially contaminated surfaces. Why? Because most people don’t understand the science of contagious disease transmission and exposed surfaces provides an elevated risk for those who do not understand the science behind transmission.
Joe Wallace specializes in personal finance, military affairs, and consumer protection topics. Since 1995, his work has appeared on Air Force Television News, The Pentagon Channel, ABC and a variety of print and online publications. He is a 13-year Air Force veteran and collects unusual vinyl records, which gives him an excuse to write the vinyl blog Turntabling.net.
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