Nevada Governor shuts down Las Vegas mayor’s wish to reopen: 'I certainly will not allow it'

Updated ·4 min read

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak joined Anderson Cooper 360 Wednesday night and responded to the bizarre interview earlier in the day, in which Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman argued for the reopening of Vegas, and even told Cooper that she had volunteered her city to be a COVID-19 control group. Goodman was not able to give a clear answer when Cooper asked if she’d be willing to spend time on the casino floors if they were to reopen. Goodman’s stance on reopening was not well received.

And Sisolak could not have shot down Goodman’s argument in more certain terms.

“I will not allow the citizens of Nevada, our Nevadans, to be used as a control group, as a placebo, whatever she wants to call it,” Sisolak said. “I certainly will not allow it.”

Though Sisolak admitted that Goodman isn’t alone in wanting to reopen, he said most officials agree it’s best to wait.

“There are clearly some that don’t see things my way, and that they’ve resisted,” Sisolak said. “But most elected officials — they’ve done nothing but help me to try to expand our testing, expand our tracing, and to open, and to open at the proper time.”

Goodman quickly met backlash from the very same Las Vegas workers that would be going back to work, and Sisolak echoed the workers’ concerns, saying he was not going to put them in the precarious position of going back to work during a pandemic.

“When we do it, we’re gonna do it right,” Sisolak said. “But I’m not gonna allow our workers to be put in a position where they have to decide between their job and their paycheck, and their life. That’s not a fair position to put them in, and I will not allow that to happen.”

And unlike some other states, like Georgia and South Carolina, Sisolak said Nevada will rely on science and statistics to know when it’s the right time to reopen.

“I’m following medical advice, and scientists, and statisticians, and they've exposed to me what we're really dealing with in terms of the metrics and having to follow a graph and the model that's been established,” Sisolak said. “I look at certain criteria. I look at hospitalizations as it relates to COVID-19, intensive care unit hospitalizations, ventilator usage, percent of positive tests versus tests that we've given. And they need those to have plateaued and begin the trajectory downward.”

Anderson Cooper 360 airs weeknights at 8 p.m. on CNN.

Watch Chris Cuomo reunite with his family following his COVID-19 quarantine:

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