Fox news, among other publications, have recently been covering New Orleans increasingly as Mardi Gras celebrations were held this month on February 21, 2023. Most commonly celebrated in New Orleans, an estimated 1 million visitors were expected to participate in the celebrations this year, according to AFAR. With this many people centralized in one location, concerns over safety are inevitably brought to the forefront of the discussion.
Discussions of New Orleans becoming America's murder capital are on the front page of many publications, such as the Fox article you cited. Looking at trends of New Orleans' crime rates, there have been many ebbs and flows. As far as murder rates, NOLA Crime News' Historical Statistics charts show that New Orleans from 1934 to 2016 saw its height of 424 murders in 1994. Since then, murder rates as a whole have gone down to about 150 t0 200 murders per year; this points to national murder rates going down since the 1990's. Although, this chart is outdated and fails to include such pivotal social and political movements that have taken place since 2016.
Notable events since 2016 include, but are not limited to, the Black Lives Matter movement, the 2016 presidential election, the 2020 presidential election, the global pandemic, and subsequent political movements in its wake. According to US murder rates catalogued by MacroTrends, murder/homicide rates in America increased by 28.64% in 2020 from the rates in 2019. Due to the lack of current information in the NOLA Crime New's chart, it can be inferred that New Orlean's murder rates increased along with the national rates. In this way, it can be argued that the safety of major cities nationally have become more dangerous, especially concerning an event as large as Mardi Gras.
Sentiments on the safety of being alone specifically in New Orleans are impacted by the real statistics behind crime rates in the city, which can be accessed by New Orleans residents as well as those who travel there from other places in the world. This is not an issue limited to non-Americans or for individuals who are alone as your original question implied, it is an issue of crime levels that impact all people in New Orleans.
AFAR link: www.afar.com/magazine/everything-you-need-to-know-about-mardi-gras-in-new-orleans#:~:text=During%20Mardi%20Gras%2C%20at%20least,Fat%20Tuesday%20parades%20and%20festivities.
Fox link: www.foxnews.com/us/americans-new-orleans-warn-dont-come-alone-murder-capital
NOLA Crime News link: nolacrimenews.com/statistics/historical-statistics/
MacroTrends link: www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate