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It’s Monday in America and Pfizer has announced testing a vaccine that appears to be more than 90% effective.

President-Elect Joseph R. Biden has also held a press conference outlining his plan to defeat the coronavirus responsible for Covid-19. Let’s unpack that a little:

The first myth blown to smithereens is that Joe Biden is senile. The oldest candidate ever elected president, this has been an on-going concern during the campaign. Donald John Trump fanned these flames by claiming that his opponent has secret health issues, just as he did with Hillary in 2016. A clever mode of attack, people are saying that this implies that he, too—Donald John Trump himself— has secret health issues. Who knows? The health issue ploy stinks to high heaven. The Joe Biden who spoke today from the rostrum, however, was definitely compos mentis and playing with a full deck.

The second myth gone to Dodoland is that Joe Biden can’t open his mouth without putting his foot therein. You know, I’ve been waiting since the debates for the caricature of a gaffe-prone Joe Biden to take center stage. Instead, he sounds just like everybody else. He seems to know what he wants to say. Pundits and political analysts point out that one of the reasons Trump had such difficulty trying to defeat Biden in debate was the fact that Joe seems to have his act together.

The third myth which I hope we can now retire is that either Bernie Sanders or nefarious AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is lurking behind the curtain, stage whispering Joe’s lines to him like a prompter in the theater. Joe is a big boy now and doesn’t need help from anyone to say his lines.

The fourth myth is that Joseph R. Biden is hostage to the left wing of his party, a coterie of wild-eyed, bomb-throwing socialists who will deprive red-blooded Americans of their last few freedoms. My crystal ball is a little cloudy regarding the month of February 2021, but so far Biden seems to be acting like a centrist president-elect who is concerned with representing all the people. A unifier, he may not serve juicy red meat in his speeches like his predecessor does, but it’s a breath of fresh air to have a chief executive focused on solving problems rather than creating them.

I am sympathetic to the Trump administration’s arguments regarding mail-in ballots. Without DNA testing, how are we to know that you are really… you know… YOU. For all anyone knows, you may be like that character in the Schwarzenegger movie, secretly a clone of yourself, in which case your mail-in ballot won’t count, since the original you– that other dude— showed up on Election Day in person and voted for the other guy.

The critics are already picking apart every facet of Biden’s plan. That is what they do. They get paid to do it. Fine. Mandatory mask-wearing, universal testing, everybody has an opinion. Everybody has concerns. We’ll hold that debate without anyone calling other people names.

What a relief!