There not being another pandemic during the information age to compare with, it's hard to say whether The Democrats mishandled it or not. Perhaps one could look at aspects where there was consensus within at least one of the opposing parties about what should happen (before the outcome of any path could be known) and compare that against hindsight. If you have specific examples where others clearly knew better than the ruling party, that would be relevant to consider if it's chance or a pattern, but otherwise it feels like the age-old opposing of the current ruling force