"Here in Colorado we actually took it a step further and really devolved [decisions] to local authority. And so we had a very different approach in some of our big blue cities [than] in some of our rural areas. We left it in local hands. Why? Because these are real trade-offs."
That's Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, talking to me two weeks ago about his approach to mask mandates. In December, he told a Colorado public radio station that "public health [officials] don't get to tell people what to wear; that's just not their job," and he withstood pressure to impose mandates during the omicron spike. Polis' approach of devolving decision-making seems to be working: Colorado has one of the lowest COVID death rates in the country.
