Pretty blunt statement here from Hancock. We’ll see if his actions match it, but notably this is not really a sentiment that Polis has expressed, at least not in such explicit terms https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/20/denver-mayor-michael-hancock-coronavirus/

Polis was asked last week about the possibility of more people dying as a result of easing strict social-distancing measures. Here’s what he said (with a few digressions elided)

That is, substantively if not stylistically, pretty close to what a lot of conservatives have been saying for the last six weeks. Polis isn’t saying that the goal should be to *minimize deaths*, only to keep cases under system capacity and give people a “fighting chance”

In his answers at press conferences the past few weeks he has leaned heavily on this idea that containment must be “sustainable” economically, and that prolonged extreme social-distancing measures are not.

To the extent that that’s true, it’s only because we’ve decided that’s the way it is, and the abysmally inadequate federal response has made it clear that won’t change.

The United States is an insanely wealthy country and to do what it takes to keep everybody in it fed, housed and healthy for a period of “many months,” even with many of them forced out of work, is entirely within its capabilities

It would be challenging in a lot of ways, including psychologically, and require a lot of shifts in what we think “the economy” is. A lot of rich people would probably get less rich. But it is extremely possible.

It seems clear that that would be the route to go if the goal were to *minimize deaths*, until we have robust testing-based containment, effective treatment and/or a vaccine. But that’s not what Polis and other policymakers are aiming for now, apparently.

Instead they’re choosing to ease the shutdown and risk many more deaths, many of them lower-income, frontline workers who will be even more vulnerable now, rather than have a different set of conversations. That’s the choice. Let’s be clear about what it is