This is an opinion column.

This is our moment.

I can’t take credit for the sentiment. But I believe it. To my core.

This is our moment. As a nation. As a city. As a neighbor. As a citizen. As a friend.

As anyone in such a time and place as this, in the age of COVID-19.

That’s all of us.

The sentiment was conveyed by Dr. Wes Willeford, an official with the Jefferson County Department of Health, on the day the City of Birmingham finally compelled us to do what we should have done all along: Keep our behinds at home.

It was shared with passion and urgency—with the emotion of someone who knows what we’re dealing with, who sees its impact every day and who fears what it could become.

If we do not do what we should have done all along: Keep our behinds at home.

“The cost,” he said, “could be many, many, many lives.”

Too many, many, many of us, unfortunately, did not heed the clear and constant urgings of public health officials to practice social isolation, avoid gatherings of more than 10 (or 25, depending on the official), and stay at least six feet from one another. All in hopes of “flattening the curve,” a term most of us had never heard just a couple of weeks ago but is now embedded in our vernacular.

Of slowing the tsunamic spread of coronavirus that threatens to choke our already-stressed health-care system.

Instead, we openly played basketball on outdoor courts; we grilled with family, friends, and neighbors sharing the tasty spoils, we gathered in too-large groups on porches and street corners, around lakes and in parks.

Some of us actually attended church services this past Sunday, as if Jesus was going to walk through the door and turn coronavirus into cupcakes, candy—or Cabernet.

We acted like it was a national holiday—not a global pandemic. Not a threat to the lives of, as we know now, pretty much everybody. But especially Big Momma, Aunt Tee Tee, Paw-Paw and all the rest of our older, frailer, already-ailed loves ones.

Now we must do what we should have done all along: Keep our behinds at home.

Now, there is no choice.

Our moment? Our moment, frankly, to live or die.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Birmingham City Council unanimously approved Mayor Randall Woodfin’s ordinance to “shelter in place,” which forbids most of us from leaving home except to do things like buy groceries, pick up food (our restaurants still offer curbside takeout or delivery, which helps keep our friends employed), seek medical attention, get gas (to go where?) or go for a walk, hike, run or bicycle ride.

Otherwise: Keep your behinds at home.

Or risk at least a conversation with your local law enforcement officer, who now has the right to fine you (up to $500) or even arrest you. Most likely, they’ll just tell you: Well, you know what.

Because this is no joke. It’s not a conspiracy. Not a myth. It’s something that will soon force health care workers to make “hard decisions”, Dr. Willeford said. Like (which he did not say) who gets a ventilator, and who doesn’t.

UAB says 18 people are currently on ventilators due to COVID-19. Six days ago, the hospital was treating just one coronavirus patient; on Tuesday, that number was 45. Do the math. With the number of cases all but guaranteed, health officials say, to continue to grow exponentially, then sometime soon, with every state in the country battling to buy more gloves, masks, and ventilators—some patients will get ventilators, some won’t.

Just yesterday, my colleague Connor Sheets reported there are only about 800 ventilators currently available to handle the anticipated explosion of coronavirus patients in the entire state.

Woodfin noted that Birmingham, such as it was a century ago, “made a full rebound” from the influenza pandemic that invaded the region in 1918. During two weeks in October, 37,000 Alabamians came down with the flu. In a 2018 article on AL.com, Michael Leavitt, an official with the Department of Health and Human Services said: “People around the state died by the hundreds.”

“We will be on the right side of history by making this decision,” Woodfin said.

If we keep our behinds at home.

Because the wrong side of history is something we simply do not want.

A voice for what’s right and wrong in Birmingham, Alabama (and beyond), Roy’s column appears in The Birmingham News and AL.com, as well as in the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com and follow him at twitter.com/roysj