Longer Looks: Las Vegas Without Casinos; Snapshots Of Economic Devastation; The Nursing Homes That Got It Right
Each week, KHN finds interesting reads from around the Web.
The New York Times:
When The Casinos Were Shuttered, The Money Dried Up In Las Vegas
It took Las Vegas nearly a decade to recover from the subprime-mortgage-market collapse in 2008, but by February of this year, the city was rolling hot again. Unemployment in Nevada was less than 4 percent. ‘‘The economy in Vegas was really chugging along,’’ Karri Kratz, a bartender at the Mirage, told me. ‘‘We were doing great.’’ Then in mid-March, in response to the coronavirus, Gov. Steve Sisolak closed all of Nevada’s nonessential businesses, including casinos. A week later, he banned social gatherings of groups larger than 10. ‘‘I’m used to hearing the fountains and the music and people honking and partying and celebrating,’’ Lorena Peril, a performer in the Luxor’s burlesque show, ‘‘Fantasy,’’ said. ‘‘And now it’s so quiet.’’ She distracted herself from the crisis by staging shows around town out of her pickup truck. (Valdes, 5/28)
The New York Times:
Scenes From An Economic Collapse
There’s a mental block to comprehending the scale of the unemployment crisis in America right now. You could start with the fact that the official figure, a 14.7 percent national unemployment rate as of April, was the highest since monthly record keeping began in 1948; Goldman Sachs now projects that figure will rise to 25 percent, roughly equal to the highest rate in American history, at the nadir of the Great Depression in 1933. Or you could try to digest the scale of jobs lost (more than 38 million, as of May 21) by comparing it to the entire population of California (39.5 million) or Canada (37.9 million). You could even try to process some of the effects of all those job losses — like the astonishing spike in hunger, with more than 40 percent of mothers of children under 12 now saying (up from 15 percent two years earlier) that their families don’t have enough to eat. (5/28)
Undark:
In Canada, Inuit Communities Are Shaping Research Priorities
Ten years ago the 1,200 residents of the tiny, mostly Inuit village of Nain, in Canada’s far northeast, lived through a natural disaster unnoticed by most of the world. From January to March, the average temperature — typically in the low single digits Fahrenheit — hovered well over 10 degrees above normal. What little sea ice formed was thin, cracked, and pockmarked with open patches. Hunting became risky or impossible, food supplies ran low, and a community survey found that one in 12 ice travelers suffered accidents that year. That spring, at least one person drowned when their snowmobiles plunged through weak ice.Ice travel has never been risk-free, and for centuries Inuit have relied on traditional trails and time-tested knowledge for mitigating risk — paying attention to ice’s color, texture, or the resistance it offers a sharp blow with a harpoon. (Halliday, 5/27)
Wired:
Some Nursing Homes Escaped Covid-19—Here's What They Did Right
In mid-March, as San Francisco mayor London Breed issued a citywide stay-at-home order, Peggy Cmiel started getting prepared. Cmiel is the director of clinical operations at the San Francisco Center for Jewish Living, or SFCJL, a 9-acre senior housing complex in the Excelsior neighborhood that includes long-term care facilities, short-term rehab housing, and a memory care wing. The campus houses over 300 elderly residents, members of one of the populations most vulnerable to the deadly and highly infectious coronavirus that has spread across the globe. (Harrison, 5/29)
Politico:
How A Convention Whet Trump’s Appetite For The Presidency
Donald Trump wants crowds, people packed tight, showing shoulder-to-shoulder support, cheering and chanting and sporting shirts and hats and waving banners and signs with his name when he makes his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention the last week of August in Charlotte. The president kicked off this post-Memorial Day week with tweeted demands of a “guarantee” of “full attendance” or else. Trump, of course, is elevating as a useful foil the Democratic governor of one of the six most important swing states come November, as local officials and shot callers accuse him of prioritizing political haymaking over public health considerations in the grip of a country-changing pandemic. (Kruse, 5/28)
