How bad is it in Las Vegas? Well, the latest edict from MGM Resorts International is that The Mirage will be closed from Monday at noon to Thursday at noon, INCLUDING the casino. (We felt that news needed a bit of extra emphasis.) Even the volcano is shutting down. That’s dire. It’s also further confirmation of what we’ve been hearing for months, that Las Vegas’ recovery is wont to be sluggish. While 2022 seems a long time to wait for a comeback, it could be worse. Tourism to New York City is not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels until 2025. What tourists want now, asserts the Reno Gazette-Journal‘s Ed Komenda is “a place that’s clean and secluded and far from the perils of the pandemic.” That’s not Vegas, where Covid-19 levels are skyrocketing and Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) dithers over whether to re-close the casinos. (Will the Nevada Resort Association or Culinary Union allow it?)
Veteran reporter Howard Stutz points to a near-total absence of international travel. “That’s why Palazzo closed. They didn’t have international business. It’s a ghost town there.” He thinks midweek closures will be the order of the day. After all, Sin City is trying to maintain 2020 A.D. room inventory on 1993 levels of business. Stutz says recovery projections are “all over the place. If the vaccine works, if this pandemic starts going away and other parts of the economy start rebounding, then we’re going to start seeing more visitation maybe by summer.” Until then, he predicts a “terrible” November (think how bad it is elsewhere in the country and then magnify that) and worse December.
I honestly hate to be a pessimist here, but that letter the Trump Administration sent last week to the States is telling, cutting the second shipments of the vaccine by freaking 40% is a gut shot, a wake up call. Forget about all the rosy promises of tens or hundreds of millions of doses right around the corner, and armies at the ready to poke arms. What might very well be on the horizon is a train wreck of logistics and a cat fight about who is next in line for the shots. Corporate interests are already sending lobbyists to push for their workers getting the shots before even old people do, the sharks are circling, the waters are unsafe. Here in California there are two million healthcare workers, I am slapping myself for being stupid enough to believe that it won’t take too long to vaccinate them, or that there would be enough product to achieve that soon. Las Vegas is in a terrible spot, they are living off of visitors from California, the epicenter of infections. I wish I could be optimistic, but the facts on the ground are stark and ominous. Stay safe my friends, and push out your predictions of normalcy several months…