The mayor of Las Vegas said the media’s coverage of the coronavirus is “destroying” the city.
“In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, ‘There is nothing to fear but fear itself,’” Mayor Carolyn Goodman, an independent, said. “This fear has taken over the world and if you look and talk to doctors, I have yet to see a doctor who espouses the voice of social media and what the media is doing here.”
Nevada has seven confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with no state deaths. Nationally, at least 1,282 cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed, with 37 deaths.
“From my perspective, what’s happened is this fear that’s taken over,” Goodman said.
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She added that the city is in continual communication with state health organizations and government leaders to ensure the health and safety of residents and visitors. She urged people to take precautions with “rudimentary” hygiene.
Las Vegas’s entertainment industry has always taken extra precaution with sanitation and safety, according to Goodman, “otherwise they’d be closed down.”
President Trump called off his upcoming trip to Las Vegas “out of an abundance of caution from the coronavirus outbreak,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Wednesday.
The president was to give the keynote speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s conference Saturday but canceled the Nevada trip, as well as one to Colorado.
Goodman isn’t the first person to lay blame on the media for fanning the flames surrounding the virus.
Celebrity physician Dr. Drew Pinsky has repeatedly said the media is overhyping its coverage of the coronavirus.
“I don’t claim to know what’s motivating the media, but my God, their reporting is absolutely reprehensible,” Pinsky said.
Pinsky said last week, “What I have a problem with is the panic and the fact that businesses are getting destroyed, that people’s lives are being upended, not by the virus, but by the panic. The panic must stop. And the press, they really somehow need to be held accountable because they are hurting people.”
