Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman told MSNBC on Tuesday that hospitality businesses should be allowed to reopen.

Goodman said her idea was based on the assumption that "everybody's a carrier." She said that the open businesses that generate infections would be closed again.

MSNBC's Katy Tur called the mayor's idea "modern-day survival of the fittest."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman thinks that businesses in the city that want to reopen should be able to — that way, those businesses that see outbreaks can just be closed again at a later date.

The mayor, who doesn't have authority over the Vegas Strip, shared her idea with MSNBC's Katy Tur in a phone interview on Tuesday.

"Assume everybody's a carrier," the mayor told Tur. "And then you start from an even slate, right there, and tell the people what to do. And let the businesses open, and competition will destroy that business if, in fact, they become evident that they have disease. They're closed down. It's that simple."

Tur, who appeared dumbfounded by Goodman's comments, called the idea "modern-day survival of the fittest."

Goodman has been a vocal critic of business closures, previously describing the shutdowns as "insanity." Matthew Maddox, the CEO of Wynn Resorts, said in an op-ed article over the weekend, "That opinion has no basis in science or data and should be ignored."

Stephen Cloobeck, the former CEO of Diamond Resorts International, appeared in Tur's Tuesday segment in a fiery video message.

"Mayor Goodman is the mayor of the city of Las Vegas downtown. She has nothing to do with the Strip. And we're sick and tired of hearing this," Cloobeck said.

In explaining her thoughts to Tur, Goodman said hospitality workers were struggling to feed their families. She also referred to other infectious diseases whose outbreaks have subsided.

"We've survived the West Nile and SARS, bird flu, E. coli, swine flu, the Zika virus," Goodman told Tur.

"They were not as contagious, and they did not spread as far as this disease has already done," Tur interjected.

As of Wednesday morning, there were more than 826,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US and more than 45,000 deaths. In Nevada, there have been nearly 4,000 cases and 163 deaths.

Goodman's comments came as protesters around the United States have held rallies calling for ending lockdowns and restarting economies.