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Massachusetts (my hometown blue state, with an R gov) is probably not far behind the others re: letting these mandates lapse. Baker has been really solid on the pandemic since the start, and it's a shame he's not seeking a third term.

I'm pretty annoyed though that we're still talking about masking, fighting the last war instead of the next one. Closing schools was a disaster, everyone agrees with that, so how about these governors get ahead of the next outbreak of respiratory illness by putting in place plans and money for ventilation and filtration?

I mean, we killed flu season in 2020-21, and it looks like we'll do it again for 2021-22. I haven't had a bad cold in forever. It's great! Would be nice if we could keep at least some portion of that going forward, right?

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I'd need to think about it, but I might be modestly receptive to the idea that governors are better equipped to make the local case according to their understanding of their electorates (not sure how the rrr grr personal responsibility Colorado message would fly in other regions).

Biden might just step in it to try to weigh in now, and not because of some sui generis Biden gaffe talking point. It might just be fundamentally more effective at a local level.

(If I dare to dream, it might be nice for the CDC to say "we looked at the data from states that are fully open and the ones that are not, and NPIs look fairly useless post-omicron once vaccination rates are high", which I suspect is mostly the case)

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I personally think you should devote the entire Mayonnaise Clinic to Cuomo's attempted rehabilitation tour and what campaign manager Josh Barro's strategy would be to get Cuomo to the Oval Office.

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The only number we should be using for decisions at the point is hospital capacity.

While it true that a spike in cases predicts a strain on capacity that relationship must be constantly evaluated.

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This has all been so frustrating. These state-wide mandates should have ended long ago once the vaccines were widely available. Let local communities decide how to best serve their people. It is extremely frustrating to see Democrats and/or Republicans taking credit for falling COVID cases. The only real effective measures have been vaccines and therapeutics. Masks only help if you properly wear an N95 or KN95. Clearly it's just the pattern of the virus to rise and fall.

I genuinely hope there's a reckoning with many politicians over their policies with children. I'm not trying to be hyperbolic in saying it's bordering on gross negligence. The United States stands mostly alone in our aggressive masking of children, and it's the kids who will pay for it. Frankly, I hope many politicians pay for it in the next election. Kids are falling behind socially and academically with ridiculous closures and pointless mask mandates. I thank God every day that I have a kid who is too young for public school right now. I wish that Democratic leaders especially would drop their terrible masking and mitigation policies at schools, but some seem to want to hang on to them forever. The data is pretty clear, and nearly every other nation prioritized keeping children's lives normal. Not us for some reason, and shame on us for that.

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This all seems generally correct to me, Josh.

This speaks to my ongoing belief that governors, as a class, have been the best group of public officials in their COVID response. It makes sense; governors mostly have to be cold realists, since they are dealing with concrete large-scale issues of actual governance. Unlike the health experts, the legislators, and the party whiners, they don't have the luxury of non-responsibility for general conditions. For the most part, I'll take random Dem or GOP governor X as my COVID leader on policy.

It's also the case that governors are best positioned to *be* COVID leaders. Not only do they have the most obviously connection to responsibility, but they also have the most power, given the nature of state authority over public health and the typical grants of existing or emergency authority from the state legislatures. This is a big part of Biden's problem; he can try to exert persuasive influence---and that's really important, for building coalition to support good policy---but ultimately he doesn't have a whole lot of hard authority here. Governors jobs are to make it work, and to be able to see the trade-offs, whether they are trade-offs between competing values or tradeoffs between stakeholders. Almost no one else has to see big picture within the nitty gritty.

Further, COVID really does defy a national solution in a diverse democracy. One problem for Biden and the CDC is that states honestly do have different risk tolerances, and that has to be an input for pandemic policy, if only because public cooperation is a relevant variable for implementing any public health strategy. A one-size fits all CDC recommendation simply cannot maximize the public health return across a diverse set of constituencies that are not going to have uniform responses to implementation. That's another plus for governors.

Your paragraph about the nature of democratic politics was also interesting. I agree with its general thrust, but I think it leaves out the power of political leadership. One reason Trump utterly failed in his COVD response (and one reason I think Biden is also quite subpar, though not to the same order of magnitude) is that he refused to be either a policy leader or a political leader; the best leaders are the ones who can push the formulation of optimal policy, and then build the coalition to make it hold together when faced with the democratic reality. Trump couldn't do either. Biden has seriously flagged on both. Plenty of governors, conservative and liberal, have managed much better. Be it Justice or Hochul or Newsome or Northam or Murphy or Hogan. It's not just that they hear the constituent pressure and respond; it's that their policies and their politics have successfully shaped constituent belief and, in many cases, trust.

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