This is an opinion column.

We’re not New York and we’re not California, Gov. Kay Ivey said last week.

As it turns out, we’re not Florida or Georgia. Nor was Alabama any of the 37 states with some version of shelter-in-place orders by this Wednesday night.

We’re not even Mississippi, whose governor, after a week of defiance, finally caved.

That’s right — we’re behind Mississippi.

Again.

“We dare defend our rights,” is what it says on Alabama’s business cards, and if the South had won the war, we’d print it on our currency. But everyone who has grown up here knows our state’s real motto: “We shall not be told.” By sheer stubbornness is how we live, and if Ivey doesn’t bend soon, stubbornness is how many of us might die.

Ivey has said her reluctance to order Alabamians to stay at home is about jobs.

“The governor’s priority is protecting the health, safety and well-being of all Alabamians, and their well-being also relies on being able to have a job and provide for themselves and their families,” Ivey’s office said in a statement Wednesday. “Many factors surround a statewide shelter-in-place, and Alabama is not at a place where we are ready to make this call.”

Alabama is not at a place, huh?

Exactly what is the place? When will Ivey be ready? I’d guess it’s 50th again, but lately, we’ve been falling behind Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia in “state” rankings.

Yes, it’s important that Alabamians have jobs, governor. But it’s more important right now that you do yours.

Here’s the thing that is so frustrating: Every state is likely to do this. Just look at the map a week ago, then yesterday, then today. Anyone with any sense or foresight can see where this is going. One by one, everyone will fall in line, but we’re determined to be at the back of that line. It’s what our government does.

Alabama: America’s caboose.

In Alabama, we resist until the very end. Gov. Ivey is treating our response to coronavirus the way Alabama has treated civil rights, same-sex marriage, the Equal Rights Amendment and medical marijuana. Or, heck — a lottery.

We’re doing it again.

Going last is no longer an act of defiance on Alabama’s part. It’s the default. It’s what we’ve become conditioned to do. Last is comfortable for us. Last is where Alabama goes to shelter in place.

But that is not leadership. It’s government by reflexes, by automation.

The problem with that approach is that the best means we have to fight the pandemic comes with an awful dilemma for public officials: The most effective measures will all seem premature at the moment they’re most effective, and if effective, they will all look like overreactions.

It might already be too late. At this point, we might only be saving face.

There’s an old joke that says, when the world ends, you want to be in Alabama because everything happens here last. Now it’s no longer a laughing matter. Alabama had what should have been a peculiar advantage — the coronavirus struck here late. Later than New York. Later than California.

We had time.

With that delay, we should have seen how deadly it was. We should have seen what we had to prepare for. We should have been able to mitigate its deadly impact.

But we didn’t see it. Ivey still doesn’t.

Alabama is stuck on autopilot. And there’s a mountain right in front of us.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.

You can follow his work on his Facebook page, The War on Dumb. And on Twitter. And on Instagram.

More columns by Kyle Whitmire

What I’ll take from the quarantine: My daughter’s first steps

Stop with the California comparisons, Kay Ivey

Lieutenant governor demands Alabama coronavirus task force do its job

If Alabama has to go back to work, so should the Legislature

In grief for normal life

The truth will tell itself

Corona-proof Alabama elections now

Alabama’s next three coronavirus problems: elections, courts and health care