Las Vegas workers say they don't want to be test subjects 'in a petri dish' after the city's mayor offered to be an experiment on reopening businesses and lifting lockdown

• The mayor of Las Vegas told CNN on Wednesday that she was willing to lift the city's coronavirus lockdown as part of a national experiment, sparking outrage.
• "We would love to be that placebo side so you have something to measure against," Carolyn Goodman told anchor Anderson Cooper on Wednesday.
• Two unions representing casino and entertainment workers in Vegas have since hit back at Goodman's claim, saying they don't want to be "an experiment in a petri dish" and "like a guinea pig in some wild experiment."
• Thousands of the city's famous bars and casinos have shut in the pandemic.
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Las Vegas casino and nightlife workers have hit back at their mayor's claim that they would be happy to be used as an experiment on the effects of lifting lockdown measures as the coronavirus pandemic rages on.

In a Wednesday interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper Wednesday, Mayor Carolyn Goodman said of city residents: "We would love to be that placebo side so you have something to measure against."

She also referred to the city's workers as a "control group."

When asked how she would ensure that federal and state government social distancing measures are enforced if the city's businesses reopened, she said: "That's up to them to figure out. I don't own a casino."

Cooper was left stunned on the interview.

In a statement Wednesday night, D. Taylor, the president of UNITE Here — a union representing 60,000 workers in the city's hotels, casinos and other entertainment venues — described Goodman's comments as "one of the worst things I've heard."

"Nobody wants people to go back more than I do, but everyone wants to go back to a safe and secure workplace and not be an experiment in a petri dish," Taylor said.

SEIU Local 1107, a union representing 9,000 healthcare workers in Nevada, also criticized Goodman for appearing to treat city workers "like a guinea pig."

"To suggest that we should endanger more lives by treating Las Vegas like a guinea pig in some wild experiment betrays a profound level of ignorance of the current situation," a spokesperson told the Daily Beast in a statement.

Goodman, who is an independent, had previously told a local news station that the lockdown measures imposed by state authorities to slow the spread of the virus were "insanity," and that the city's businesses should be reopened at the soonest opportunity.

She also told MSNBC's Katy Tur that she wants to reopen casinos and let the number of infections determine which of them have to close. Tur described the idea as a "modern-day survival of the fittest."

To date, there have been 4,081 cases of the novel coronavirus confirmed in Nevada, and 181 deaths.