There seems to be a perception abroad in the land that, because Coronavirus is abating we’re out of the woods and can revert to pre-Covid-19 conduct. Reports of people wildly disregarding social distancing (now being downgraded to “appropriate distancing,” whatever the Sam Hill that is) on casino floors bear this out. And the recent spate of civil-rights marches poses an existential question of whether protesting heinous injustice outweighs creating one’s own roving “hot zone” (a complex conundrum with which we continue to wrestle). Former casino boss Richard Schuetz has a column today that is must-reading (as Schuetz usually is). He talks about the grim realpolitik of reopening casinos, saying, “Anyone who suggests there will not be any deaths associated with coronavirus as a result of the reopening of the casinos simply does not get it. There will be infections and deaths. But the folks making these decisions appear to believe they do understand the character of the underlying risk distribution and/or they can reshape and/or manage this distribution by developing sound re-opening strategies so the risks can be mitigated to an acceptable level.” (Especially because Covid-proofing your hotel won’t be cheap.)
He goes on to note that the illnesses and deaths will fall disproportionately on the people at the bottom of the casino totem pole, i.e., individuals of color. He concludes, “I believe that if this virus were tricky enough to single out casino executives, hedge fund managers, the private equity folks, or political donors, the casinos would be very slow to reopen.” Schuetz rehearses the pro- and con-reopening decisions very thoughtfully and I cannot urge you enough to read him in full instead of settling for our summary.
Also throwing in their two cents is Jamie Leigh Klingler, co-founder of Smith Rosen Gaming Partitions, who takes issue with Nevada regulators’ decision not to require casino guests to wear masks. “Casinos have only been open a few days and it is evident that people are choosing 
to ignore the dangers of not wearing a mask in public,” she writes. She’s started a petition drive to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, although so far she has only five signatories of the 10,000 she seeks. Smith Rosen does not make masks, so Klingler has no skin in the game, so to speak. She does append a link to a New York Times story that highlights the “extreme” difficulty of contact-tracing in Sin City. Casinos, it argues, are “cruise ships on land” (well, maybe not that bad) and notes how one infected attendee at a Mirage-hosted conference last winter created an insta-hot zone. Klingler’s got an uphill climb verging on the vertical ahead of her but we wish her luck.
Then there’s the double-edged sword that is the granting of favorable treatment to people who can prove they are immune (well, as immune as you can get absent a vaccine), which raises the specter of discrimination against the Great Unwashed … or should we say Great Untested? Yes, people are actually using their positive Covid-19 tests as a business opportunity. Ironically, workers in the service industry who tested positive for Coronavirus and pulled through could find themselves advanced to the front lines. China and Chile are already granting special privileges to people who have survived the disease. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci has given conditional approval to the idea of “immunity certificates” in the U.S.
There are incidences of individuals actually attempting to contract Covid-19 in order to get such a paper, getting them to the front of travel queues and such. Holding such a “Coronavirus party” in Las Vegas would be like detonating a dirty bomb. And dividing the country between the supposedly immune and the at-risk would create a caste system—hardly what we need. Says Stanford University history professor Kathryn Olivarus, “I’m worried we’ll develop this system, the haves of immunity, the have-nots, it sounds science fictional almost.” Actually, there’s precedent in our history for it, particularly in the era when Yellow Fever was rampant, so could be in for social déja vu.
* In a promising development for Atlantic City casinos, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) has given Garden State horse tracks the green light to start running again June 5. Well, the Meadowlands, anyway, which commences with two days of harness racing. Monmouth Park follows on July 3 and Freehold Raceway brings up the rear on September 4. Murphy’s conditions for the resumption of racing are, reports Bill Sokolic, “personal protective equipment, social distancing, no non-essential individuals at the racetrack or stables, and cleaning and sanitization.” Casinos, take note.
* Not again! We were made privy to an e-mail blast from MGM Resorts International that reads, in part, “On July 10, 2019, we learned that an unauthorized party had accessed and downloaded certain MGM Resorts 
guest data from an external cloud server a few days earlier. The affected information may have included names, contact information (such as postal addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers), and dates of birth. The specific data affected differed for each impacted individual … We are providing you with credit monitoring services for one year at no cost to you, and encourage you to follow the instructions below to enroll in these services.” MGM promises an investigation of the data raid, involvement by law enforcement and upgraded monitoring of its cyber-security. Still, this sort of thing seems to befall the lion a lot. And why the tardy disclosure, 11 months late?
