Prior to the election of Joe Biden as president of the United States, many argued were he elected California’s bumbling response to the coronavirus pandemic would become the national standard. We are well on our way to that being quite prescient.

Mr. Biden is elevated into the presidency in part because of misleading people about the success of Donald Trump’s attack plan to mitigate the destruction of COVID-19, not the least of which was Operation Warp Speed delivering vaccines within a year. Joe Biden campaigned on having a plan to defeat COVID-19. We are now being told by the Biden administration that President Trump had “no vaccine distribution plan.” A strange claim considering U.S. News and World Report notes as of this Monday, the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 22,734,243 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Monday morning and distributed 41,418,325 doses.” An objective observer stationed on Earth would have to agree this is the result of Mr. Trump’s distribution plan.

Moreover, just two days after being inaugurated, Mr. Biden revealed he has no plan at all. At a press conference, he told the nation, “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.” Besides revealing the empty suit now in the presidency, this also implies that masks and social distancing really aren’t making a difference.

In all fairness, Mr. Biden did have a plan, sort of. His plan is to copy what Mr. Trump had already achieved. By the time Mr. Biden entered office, the United States was vaccinating almost 1,000,000 people a day. That goal was suddenly one of the big plans from the new administration. We know Mr. Biden has a plagiarism problem, but when it comes to life and death issues it’s even more unacceptable.

And then there is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been elevated to an even more prominent role in the Biden administration. Normally a promotion would be reserved for someone who knew what they were doing. Dr. Fauci has an incredibly high profile because of innumerable interviews, magazine covers and throwing out the first ball during the beginning of the baseball season. While he may play a doctor on TV, this column has dealt with his chronic problem of relying on guesswork versus grounded science in what he tells the American people about the coronavirus.

He went from insisting to the American people they didn’t need to wear a mask, to then telling them they did. He explained that he lied about the necessity of masks because, according to him, he did so out of fear of the country running low on masks for the medical community. That doesn’t make sense, of course, because they only later explained wearing non-medical masking was just fine.

If we are to believe our national mask flip-flopper this time, he is now telling us that “common sense” makes it more “likely” that wearing two masks is better than wearing one.

So again we remove ourselves from the science of things and dive into the pool of winging it with Fauci, as his public musings inevitably become national mandates. If this tells us anything, it’s that the “science” driving single-mask mandates for adults and children throughout the country was not true, any more than Mr. Fauci telling us we didn’t need one at all.

But is more actually better? If we take this to the ultimate end they might as well put us in space suits. Or maybe the burka, but then asking men to wear that perhaps would be a bridge too far.

A hospital in Florida is providing the ultimate warning that wearing excessive personal protection equipment may even be dangerous when dealing with coronavirus.

“Dozens of people being treated for Covid-19 at a Florida hospital last summer became additionally infected with a mysterious, often deadly fungus called Candida auris, a U.S. government study said Friday,” reported the news agency AFP. The infection was found throughout their coronavirus unit.

In addition to needing to disinfect equipment more often, AFP reported the CDC found something else alarming and added “that hospital staff, possibly out of fear of the coronavirus, were wearing multiple layers of personal protective equipment (PPE), which is not recommended and in fact heightens the risk of microbe transmission.”

Back in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has suddenly decided to lift the draconian statewide lockdown he put in place because of a surge of COVID-19 in the golden state, despite the fact that cases continue to rise.

What is the difference, you may ask? He did this within a week of Joe Biden becoming president. Even more compelling is the fact that the recall effort has gained considerable steam and is now very close to the number of signatures they need to put his removal on the ballot.

Adding to the mystery is the fact that Mr. Newsom is refusing to share with anyone the data and metrics he’s using to lift the lockdown. The AP reported, “California Health and Human Services Agency spokeswoman Kate Folmar said officials are committed to transparency, providing twice-weekly updates on whether regions can relax restrictions. But she said projected ICU capacity is based on multiple variables, including available beds and staffing that change regularly. ‘These fluid, on-the-ground conditions cannot be boiled down to a single data point — and to do so would mislead and create greater uncertainty for Californians,’ she said in a statement.

COVID-19 has been a disaster for the world. The virus sent from China has killed over 400,000 Americans. With all issues, Americans deserve better than elected leadership and bureaucratic “experts” using a disaster for political reasons or to bolster their own grandiose view of themselves. 

• Tammy Bruce, president of Independent Women’s Voice, author and Fox News contributor, is a radio talk-show host.