American holidays

One of the happy things I recently realised was the number of good quality international news networks that have all day live and free feeds on Youtube.   ABC News (America) always comes up, sometimes NBC (not sure if it always live, actually), Sky News from the UK (which presents as a relatively normal news network in what I have seen - has the Murdoch family decided that only American and Australian versions need to be "wingnut at night" outlets?); France 24; DW from Germany; Al Jazeera; and of course my beloved CNA from Singapore.   Our own ABC is on there as well, although it's just the News network which I can watch free to air.

That's all by way of introduction to noting that I was watching ABC News (America) this morning and was surprised to see a puff piece about holiday bargains to be had at the moment within America.  Cheap hotels!  Cheap airfares!  Why not go to Las Vegas!  (Yes, Las Vegas was specifically a destination mentioned.)

Sure,  Las Vegas in summer, where the only option is to stay indoors in air conditioned, COVID spreading wonder.   Here's a report from a few hours ago:

Foot traffic in Las Vegas casinos is starting to slow as the number of COVID-19 cases rise.

Roughly 350,000 visitors were estimated to be in Clark County casinos Saturday, the lowest Saturday count since casinos reopened on June 4, according to a Monday note from J.P. Morgan analyst Joseph Greff. More than 400,000 were in casinos the Saturday the week prior, and roughly 550,000 on July 4.

The analyst attributed the drop to increased COVID-19 cases in Nevada. The Southern Nevada Health District reported 1,288 new coronavirus cases in the state on Sunday, 88 percent of which were in Clark County. It was the fifth day in a row officials reported more than 1,000 cases in the county.

And from another site:

Southern Nevada hospitals are filling with COVID-19 patients, and intensive care unit occupancy is rising fast.

In Clark County, it recently rose to 89 percent. And though not all of those patients are stricken with COVID-19, it's the highest level of ICU occupancy since the outbreak began. Statewide, the Nevada Hospital Association reported about 27 percent of all ICU patients are suffering from COVID-19,

I then flipped over to NBC News, which had a story about Christian summer camps having to be cancelled when COVID outbreaks start in them. A few days ago, Slate had an article about one camp with 82 cases!

In short - isn't it just a really bad idea to be taking a holiday nearly anywhere in the US at the moment?   Ratbag wingnuts refusing to wear masks;  heat and airconditioning; touching slot machines in a casino?  (I presume they are providing gloves for that, but people still touch their face.)

Yet here we have ABC News trying to get people to get out and grab a bargain holiday?

The network is owned by Disney, and I have the uncomfortable feeling that it may well turn out that there is corporate self interest going here, to encourage people to think that you can be safe enough travelling so as to visit Disney properties, not by encouraging visits to their theme parks directly, but by encouraging holiday travel generically.

Someone should question the company about this.