Rodio steps up; A kinder, gentler restart

Unlike some leaders in our federal government, Caesars Entertainment CEO Anthony Rodio has the stones to be seen wearing a health mask in public, as he does in a new video message to Caesars customers. Without going into the exhaustive details of Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts, Rodio outlines a four-step program for making the Las Vegas Strip safe to visit again.

• More-frequent cleaning of high-touch areas
• Greater deployment of hand-sanitizer stations, requirement of employees to wash their hands for 20 seconds and encouragement of guests to do the same
• Employees will be wearing masks “and you are strongly encouraged to as well”
• Party sizes at restaurants will be limited, as will seating at table games, buffet-style and table side food service are temporarily Out, while slots “may be” limited to every other machine [C’mon, you can do a little better than that].

Caesars has brought up the rear in property closings and in announcing safety protocols but seems to be trying to make up for lost time. Rodio will be missed when the (overpriced) Caesars buyout is finally consummated. Over at MGM Resorts International, the company has announced that “one other resort” will be reopened alongside Bellagio and New York-New York … but they’re still being coy as to which one it is. We’re sticking by JP Morgan analyst Joseph Greff‘s prediction that it’s going to be Excalibur. That way MGM hits all three price tiers: high, low and middle.

* Station Casinos will be testing employees at Red Rock Resort, Green Valley Ranch, Boulder Station, Sunset Station, Santa Fe Station and Palace Station for Coronavirus. The question of what it’s doing for Wildfire employees is simply begged. Maintain social distancing in a Wildfire casino? Good luck. In the meantime, Station has pink-slipped 39% of its employees, primarily those connected with the Palms, Texas Station, Fiesta Henderson and Fiesta Rancho, implying that it will be a good long while before those non-core properties reopen. In a clement move, health benefits for all have been protracted through September.

* Arrant politicians, from Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman (I) on up, have been insisting that more deaths is a choice we must gladly pay for reviving an ailing economy. But is it really that grim and simple? A Boston Globe analysis tries to chart a middle course. Among the proposed nostrums: “Maintain a stay-at-home advisory for seniors, and limit family access to nursing homes, because the elderly are most vulnerable to infection. Allow older employees to work at home even as younger colleagues return to the office. Permit more outdoor restaurant dining, because it’s safer than breaking bread indoors, and loosen restrictions on small social gatherings like backyard barbecues while still barring large crowds at concerts and sporting events.”

That being said, it is acknowledged that selective lockdowns will be even more difficult to enforce and come with their own set of problems. For instance, can restaurants break even on outdoor-only dining and will having older workers stay at home be a form of discrimination? MIT has studied the problem and concluded that flattening the curve depends on keeping the over-65 population out of harm’s way while younger people, in essence, take their chances. (This is what Georgia is doing.) This could “reduce deaths by 33 percent while reducing economic losses by 35 percent. The point is, with targeted policies the available options just get much, much better.” In other words, the alternative to an all-or-nothing approach is to phase society back in by age group, as is being done in Ohio, Massachusetts and other states.

Grouping Coronavirus-positive people together in alternate living arrangements (such as otherwise empty hotels) is also mooted. Seniors could get their own version of the ‘early bird special’ in terms of access to public spaces like parks. But the elephant in the room is the higher rate of suffering by poor people and those of color … and nobody seems to have an answer for that. Is our country prepared for the degree of introspection this would require? We’ll give the last word to Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera, who says reopening “is not a binary choice. . . . We are a society that put a man on the moon. We have to be able to take care of this problem.” It’s not rocket science.