Las Vegas Review-Journal front page, March 24, 2023
There it was, stripped yesterday across the top of the print-edition Las Vegas Review-Journal front page. “State had high virus deaths,” the headline said, citing a new study published in the esteemed British weekly medical journal The Lancet. The study reckoned that over two years Nevada had the eighth highest per-capita death rate from COVID-19 among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
At the New to Las Vegas world headquarters, I am trying to figure out why this suddenly is such big stop-the-presses news in Nevada’s leading newspaper. Maybe because it doesn’t matter as much anymore?
More than two years ago, in the throes of the pandemic, I started writing in this space about how Clark County–home to Las Vegas and more than 70% of Nevada’s population–was continually experiencing higher COVID-19 death rates than the national average. The Las Vegas media dutifully reported the official local data. But I saw little effort to put the numbers in any kind of national context or draw meaningful conclusions–or contrast and compare, as my New Jersey high school teachers used to command. (With so much of the state’s population, Clark County seems like a good representative proxy for all of Nevada, and anyway, this blog isn’t called New To Nevada.)
I’m thinking the other locals didn’t want to scare off the tourists, the only real economic engine here despite years of claimed business diversification. But visitors ended up being scared off for awhile, anyway, perhaps after being officially informed, as I wrote in late 2020, that being out-and-about along the Strip was okay for them but not for Vegans. Continue reading
