“It would seem that the cruise industry, its passengers and employees have been viewed by the CDC in the same vein as meat packing plants, nursing homes and prisons. The industry has little recourse or avenues of appeal. The CDC has the power to keep ships at anchor and impound or quarantine ships should they decide to sail.”
—Nomura Holdings, on what it calls the “unjust” ongoing suspension of cruise ship travel, causing Norwegian Cruise Lines and Carnival Corp.’s stocks to fall
“It feels like a bad dream that I want to wake up from, but I can’t. I don’t believe he was comfortable returning to work. He was very concerned.”
— Shawne Jackson, whose father Robert Washington Jr., died of Covid-19 after returning to work as a security guard at the Gila River Casino Lone Butte in Chandler—Washington was 68, a diabetic and had just beaten prostate cancer
“This is like a Formula 1 race where the pace car has come back on. Everyone is bunched up again. But frankly, if you’ve got the Mercedes that’s lapping a second and a half faster than everybody else, when the pace car moves off the lap, times will be what they were prior to the shutdown.”
—Adam Greenblatt, CEO, Roar Digital, on the BetMGM sportsbook’s hopes to get out in front in a revived mobile sports betting market
“It’s not going to be something we can recover in the first 10 months of being open. It will take years to recover the amount of money lost.”
—Jef Bauer, general manager, Augustine Casino, over the losses the Southern California property suffered during the pandemic
“While it’s no surprise that revenue for casinos remained at $0, it doesn’t make the eeriness of the reporting any less profound.”
—Max Bischel, vice president of U.S. business, Gambling.com, on toppled revenue figures across the board in the gaming industry
“At some point, you have to make that decision to reopen knowing that when we put people back together, we will see more cases.”
—Dr. Kathleen C. Brown, University of Tennessee epidemiologist
“We’re not in a post-Covid era. We’re in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. We’re right dead-smack in the middle of it.”
—Steve Sisolak, Nevada governor, alarmed by the number of casino patrons who have declined to wear face masks
