A pink azalea or pinxter flower [Rhododendron periclymenoides] taking advantage of the woods pollen on Lookout Mountain in Dekalb County, Alabama: Glynn Wilson

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, Ala. — The dots on the coronavirus map and the color representing the Republican Party are not the only bright red things around here right now. In the mountain woods of North Alabama, the pollen count is on “Very High.”

So your runny nose, sneezing and coughing may not be caused by COVID-19 after all.

But if you suffer from allergies, making it more likely that you will cough and sneeze in public — and you may have been exposed to the coronavirus with or without your knowledge — you may want to follow the advice of the experts and stock up on supplies and stay at home all you can and consider wearing gloves and a mask.

Take a moment on this Palm Sunday to not only pray for the dead and dying. Take a moment of silence to consider how you would feel if someone close to you dies from this — and you ignored the warnings and put them at risk cavalierly out of paternalistic machismo or political hubris.

It’s not a tale of grief I want to tell.

So when things started getting a little crazy in Florida on Friday, in the small town north of Pensacola where we had hunkered down since the last week of February before the Coronavirus Pandemic came ashore with a bang, I packed up the media camper van and hightailed it out of there going north at exactly the speed limit.

Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis had finally declared an emergency and a shelter-in-place order, making it clear that he was not fully prepared to enforce it, giving the hint to local officials in small towns like Milton to emphasize the lack of police enforcement of the order — rather than the dire need for everyone who could to STAY AT HOME!

Sheriff David Morgan: Deputies will not arrest people for leaving home under new order

It’s not that I am in favor of more police power or state control. I’m not. Far from it.

But I know how people are, and I know they won’t listen unless given an order by someone up on high.

In this fast moving crisis, I had already written on Thursday quoting U.S. Senator Doug Jones saying that Alabama’s Republican Governor Kay Ivey should issue a statewide shelter-in-place order, which she had resisted and sent mixed signals to the public much like the governor of Florida and the president himself.

During the question and answer session in a press conference, Senator Jones said he “absolutely” thought Governor Kay Ivey should issue a statewide shelter in place order.

“Clearly we are showing that this will help blunt the curve,” he said. “It sends a strong message to the people of Alabama of how significant this is. An order really gets that message across.”

He heard reports that people have been out on the lakes in the state in large gatherings having parties.

“That is just unacceptable,” he said.

Senator Doug Jones of Alabama and a UAB Doctor Hold Live Press Conference to Address the Latest on the Coronavirus

But as I crossed the state line into Alabama on Friday afternoon, I heard on the radio that she succumbed to the pressure and issued such an order, saying citizens must stay at home — with LOTS and LOTS of exceptions and caveats.

It says all non-work-related gatherings of 10 or more people are prohibited and it recommends that citizens must stay home except when they need to perform “essential activities,” like working, duh — if the company you work for is in fact open for business.

It says you can go out to obtain “necessary supplies or services,” which could mean just about anything, from buying up all the toilet paper at the Dollar Store to clearing the shelves of booze at the state-owned ABC liquor store.

It also allows attending religious services, of course. This is Alabama, the buckle of the Bible Belt. Although the executive order recommends drive-in worship services or gatherings of 10 people or less who keep 6-feet apart.

Ministers who defy this in the name of God will be responsible for the deaths of their members. It won’t be God’s fault.

You can go out according to this order if you are “taking care of others,” or “visiting family members” or “engaging in outdoor activity” or involved in any “travel that is required by law.”

It does say grocery stores and big box stores are limited to no more than 50 percent of the normal occupancy load “as determined by the fire marshal.”

You might look for that sign or ask the next time you just have to drive to the Winn Dixie or the Piggly Wiggly for more bread, milk or beer. Is your store more than half full?

A Secret

A Snuffy Smith log cabin somewhere in the woods of Northeast Alabama: Glynn Wilson

I’ll let you in on a little secret. My new coronavirus hideout is a Snuffy Smith log cabin on private land, somewhere in northeast Alabama in the mountain woods on a conservation easement. It’s not clear for how long. Everything is in flux and moving fast as this health pandemic and economic collapse sends everything spinning down an unknown path of epic, end-times proportions.

If you think the pundits on cable TV know what they are talking about, you might want to think again. This is an unpredictable situation and I’ve listened to just enough of television news on the CBS News app on my iPhone and the NPR app to know that this talk about “returning to normal” in a matter of weeks or opening the country up for business by Easter is not only sheer fantasy. It’s downright dangerous, for everybody, including the people saying it.

Have we simply forgotten the adage, “Prepare for the worst; hope for the best?”

It seems some of the people in charge of our planning right now seem to think the strategy should be: “Tell everyone to believe in ‘hope for the best’; ignore the worst case scenario or doom our economy and our party to the dustbin of history.”

For more on that, see this:

The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged
From the Oval Office to the CDC, political and institutional failures cascaded through the system and opportunities to mitigate the pandemic were lost.

I’m not even going to bother reporting the overall national or state numbers at this point, since they will be obsolete before I could hit “publish” and share this on social media.

But I will say that when I left Florida on Friday, there were about 50 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Santa Rosa County with 8 hospitalizations and 2 deaths. In Dekalb County, Alabama, there are so far 14 cases out of 148 people tested, and no deaths.

This is rural, woody, mountainous terrain, sparsely populated, so as long as everyone will go by the guidelines and not pollute the Walmart with COVID-19, we might all make it at least through this next month alive and well. That won’t be true for the people of places like New York and New Orleans, where the sickness and death rate is about to overrun the capacities of hospitals and morgues to handle the patients and bodies.

What happens after April is anybody’s guess, although I’ve been watching the modeling online. The rate of sickness and death in the United States of America is surpassing the previous top hot spot, Italy, and Alabama is on track to top California’s per capita sickness and death rate. This is not going to be pretty anywhere you live. And it could go through the summer and into November, potentially roiling the 2020 elections in ways no one wants to even consider right now.

Mr. Trump has hinted before at what he wants, to be anointed for life like a Supreme Court justice or king, so he can establish the first dictatorship in the history of American democracy.

As for my poor home state of Alabama, it seems to come in close to last in many things, except football of course. But ignoring this science and your doctor and listening to this president and his pundits will get you to the top of the coronavirus death list fast, people. This is not where we want to be.

There are stories I’m hearing from around the state about heroic efforts to bring communities and neighbors together to deal with some of the more severe issues out there, like the shortage of masks for health care workers. We hope to be able to tell some of those stories soon now that we are in Alabama’s Fourth Congressional District for a little while. At some point when it appears safe, we will be traveling across the district to check out the local situation.

We’ve got a few other stories to tell about some representatives around here who are providing none or the wrong kind of leadership in these difficult times.

We’ve also hooked up with a new reporter to introduce before long, so along with the darkness, there is light ahead in these what we might call “interesting times.”

It’s always fascinating to see how people respond to disaster. Inevitably, their true character comes out into the open, for all to see, or at least the people with an ear to hear and an eye to see the truth.

You can’t change the mind of a stubborn mule or a jackass who refuses to move, even when prodded.

But you can get the heck away from them if you live the mobile life, like I do.

They will either listen, or they will die.

Like Republican state Senator Trip Pittman once told me, when he was trying his best to cut $78 million more a year from the Medicaid budget, “Well you know what, we all gotta die sometime.”