This is an opinion column.

Testing. One…two…three…

Testing. One…two…three…

Testing?! Anyone listening?!

Everybody’s momma had some version of this admonition, saved for those blessed moments when their precious child was about to dive headlong into dumb, right behind a friend (or friends):

Just because (fill in the blank with said friend’s name) is a knucklehead doesn’t mean you have to be one, too.

Oh, to hear this emanating from momma Kay Ivey:

Just because Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina and a few others are knuckleheads doesn’t mean we have to be one, too.

The governor all but said that Tuesday, surprising many of us by saying the smartest thing we’ve heard from a Southern governor in days: “Keep doing what you’re doing; stay-at-home stays in effect.”

She was listening.

I wouldn’t have been at all shocked, though, had Ivey, like her knucklehead peers in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, pulled the chain to fire up the neon “open” sign and declared Alabama open for business— COVID-19 and all y’all yet to be infected or detected (or dead) be damned.

I would’ve yawned had she chosen partisanship, profit and pandering to protestors unwilling (or unable) to understand we’re notevenclose to being able to reopen without risking a mountainous new curve of infections, illness, and death.

Instead of protecting lives.

Yet she didn’t. Ivey relied on health experts, folks who actually know this stuff, who studied viruses and pandemics long before we began to freak out when someone close to us coughs. They’re cautiously optimistic over the recent stabilization of the number of Alabamians testing positive each day but are still scared as heck that diving into dumb too soon—see: Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Ohio and soon maybe Texas—could be a deadly disaster.

“My opinion doesn’t count,” Ivey said. “Decisions will be based on data, not a desired date.”

And this is the data that most matters now: Only about 1 percent of Alabamians have even been tested for COVID-19, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health. Just over 48,000 residents in a state with more than 4.9 million citizens.

That means 99 of the 100 people you run into at the grocery store, in the park, or anywhere (while practicing social distancing, of course) don’t even know if they have the virus or its antibodies.

Alabama Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said Tuesday the daily rise in people infected has slowed over the last few days to around 160, from 200 and even 300 per day at its peak.

“We’re encouraged by all the things we see there,” he said.

Though, Harris acknowledged, “the ultimate goal of widespread testing is not realistic any time soon.”

Testing beyond those exhibiting symptoms, since early data shows most people who test positive for COVID-19 may be asymptomatic. (On Tuesday, California became the first state to recommend testing some people not showing symptoms of the virus.)

Testing beyond those with the ability to get to a testing site, since data shows one factor contributing to the disparate impact of the novel coronavirus on African Americans and other ethnic groups is lack of access to care—a lacking that now extends to testing sites that require transportation to reach.

“We need to get up to speed,” the governor said.

Boosted by data. Here’s hoping the governor continues down that path. When it’s not about COVID-19.

When it’s about us. About what holds us back. What diminishes us. What douses our humanity.

When it’s about expanding Medicaid, where data shows doing so embraces our working poor, those for whom to access to real healthcare may allow them to keep working and providing for their families.

When it’s about being pro-life before and beyond the womb—where data shows that ensuring poor expectant mothers have the pre-natal care needed to lower our infant mortality rate, and the post-natal care to ensure their child is healthy and hungry, not for food but to pursue their dream.

When it’s about investing in our state’s minority- and women-owned business when data shows they are (or should be) the lifeblood for economic growth in our largest cities, for closing the wealth gap no one appears to be able (or willing) to address.

When it’s about us, governor, about how we can finally be better.

Let the data continue to guide you. Long after we’ve conquered COVID-19.

Let it help you conquer ourselves.

Anyone listening?

Blind Gov. Ivey

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