A father and son medical team drive in a beige GMC pickup truck drive through a rural Black Belt county to check on a patient awaiting the results of a coronavirus test.

They hop out of their truck and knock on the door of patients they’ve known for decades.

“I don’t think (they) have it,” said Dr. William Lee. Still, he offered the test to this patient because of travel history, past medical condition, and a home situated near older residents.

Lee makes rounds with his son Ben, a medical resident, who plans to eventually work for his father.

The family raises cattle and has a pet alligator called Al that lives in its pond. Lee takes medical missionary trips around the world. He confronted the Ebola virus in Africa as an active duty medic and shepherded his patients in Marion through a Tuberculosis outbreak a few years ago.

“I think the concern (about the coronavirus) is good. The panic is not,” he said.

Alabama state health officials have moved faster than in some other states. Alabama suspended dining in restaurants and bars, and state official banned all gatherings of 25 or more. Lee says he thinks such social distancing will help flatten the viruses’ curve, but he also questions whether it’s the best approach.

“Are we delaying the inevitable, where the normal people can go out, get the thing, develop the immunity, and we march on as a society?”

Lee hopes the approaching warm weather will hamper the coronaviruses’ spread.

His small, private practice in Marion, in Perry County, is one of the only clinics to offer the coronavirus test. With about 18 labs submitted, and some results still pending, there has yet to be a positive in the County. Lee estimates his lab has about 12 more tests available and is awaiting more he hopes will arrive.

Lee says he is using his limited coronavirus tests to get a community snapshot.

“I may test some people more so based on their job description, based on what their impact would be in the community either through spreading it or losing them in the community.”

Dr. Lee speaks with his son Ben, a third year medical resident who plans to work at his dad's clinic.

He says the challenge is, a lot of patients want the test but don’t need it.

“We’ve ran into actually some open belligerence about that. ‘If you don’t test me and something happens to me, I’m going to get a lawyer,’” he said.

He worries some patients who might test positive but have few complications will demand to go to the hospital. He says going to the hospital might not be in their best interest.

And that’s why he believes managing infectious diseases is also about managing society’s response to a disease. It is in large part psychological, like managing any herd.

“I can go out in the middle of my cows and I can put range pellets on the ground, and you can shoot a machine gun up in the air and they’re going to eat those range pellets,” he said.

“But if a stranger walks out and you don’t have anything positive and you shoot a gun up there, you know, they’re going to rush the fence. ”

He says leaders in the United States are similarly trying to prevent a bunch of people from “rushing the fence.”

Lee thinks the Alabama Department of Health is handling the disease fairly well, but frustration among physicians about unknowns and changing directives is inevitable.

“There is not a set-in-stone way to manage this. You just have to use science and you have to use common sense,” he said.

Lee’s clinic changed its normal practices recently in response to the outbreak. Staff now take temperatures when people enter the clinic and require some visitors to wear masks. Lee has already identified a back door where any patients that do get the virus can drive up for treatment.

Since many insurers expanded coronavirus coverage to include telemedicine, Lee and his son are also shifting many regular appointments to online to prevent spread.

With limited internet access at home, same as throughout large rural stretches of Alabama, he has been slowed in his effort to watch informational videos about coronavirus geared toward doctors.

Still Lee makes multiple home visits a day. He is the medical director at several nursing homes in the area. As he drives to visit one, he passes the Marion Military Institute. He says he helped advise the college to shut down to prevent spread of the virus.

“Here’s a dead bobcat in the road,” he exclaims laughing. “You don’t see that all the time… That could be some sort of vision, a buzzard eating a dead bobcat.”

Lee points out a one-room brick school for the children of freed slaves, “the old Lincoln School," as he drives past it. He proudly points out a dialysis center he helped set up, one of the few available in the Black Belt.

Originally from Hueytown, Alabama, Lee always wanted to be a rural physician. He considered moving up to Virginia to open a practice but settled on Marion instead. He wears many hats in town. In his 30’s, he worked around the clock filling many roles. He ran a private practice during the day and moonlighted at night at the local hospital, now closed.

He says when he was a kid, his parents used to take him to be with children who had chicken pox to get it before school started.

Dr. Lee visits multiple nursing homes a day

“In the deep South, what’s going to save us is we start getting weather like this on most days. Historically that’s what ends viral epidemics, he said. “They’re not sure about this but we’re hoping.”

Referring to what is happening in Italy, where hospitals are overwhelmed and some elderly patients are being unattended, Lee said it is a cause for fear.

But he says he would like to know which demographics there are dying and hasn’t seen those numbers. If it’s mostly the older population, that’s a good sign.

“I hate to use my hope, but if it (only) got into a susceptible population (in Italy) might give you a little more confidence this stuff can be whipped,” he said.

In terms of the virus’ path through Marion, Lee still imagines the predictable.

“Praise god it is a sleepier situation,” he said.