NWA EDITORIAL: Let us give thanks

"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."

-- Matthew 26:41

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In the biblical telling of Jesus' final days on earth, he travels with his disciples to a garden. He told three of them to "keep watch with me," then walked a short distance to pray privately in an intense moment of overwhelming sorrow at the events playing out around him.

Stay vigilant, Jesus was saying.

It's a message similar to what public health and political leaders have delivered to Arkansans in recent days, as the state's "second wave" of covid-19 cases swells into what may seem more like a tsunami before those precious days when vaccines can stem the tide.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, typically drawn toward optimism in a stay-the-course approach to balancing economic needs and efforts to reduce infections, sounded downright ominous. Quoting a White House Coronavirus Task Force report, Hutchinson said the previous two weeks' trends put Arkansas on the "precipice of a rapid accelerating increase in cases which will be followed with new hospital admissions."

"Now that's a statement that will get your attention as a leader," Hutchinson said. "We look at the holiday season that is approaching and we have to be mindful that if Arkansas continues at the present pace over the last two days, then Arkansas will have an additional 1,000 Arkansans that will die as a result of covid-19 between now and Christmas."

Hutchinson hoped the daunting predictions would inspire Arkansans to follow public health guidelines "to do everything we can to break that trend."

The week just got worse, though. By Thursday, Hutchinson was announcing a one-day tally of 2,238 new covid-19 cases within the state. Worse still, the number of covid-19 patients in intensive care units, the tally of active cases and the number of people on ventilators hit all-time highs.

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Back to that biblical story. After his prayers, Jesus returned to his disciples to discover they had nodded off, perhaps exhausted by the day's events. He urged them further to keep watch, but recognized how difficult a chore that might prove to be when the "flesh is weak." The next time he returned? A snoozefest.

Staying vigilant is hard.

In regular updates from Northwest Arkansas' hospitals, the recurring message lately has been an intensified concern for what could be ahead amid pleadings for residents to also stay vigilant into the holidays and winter months.

"We are concerned that with covid fatigue, going into colder weather and the holidays that people will relax the safety practices that help combat the virus," said Eric Pianalto, president of Mercy Hospital Northwest Arkansas. "I've had to have tough conversations with my own family members about not being able to have our traditional large holiday gatherings this year. It's difficult not to be able to see our loved ones like we once did but the risk of contracting the virus is too great. Especially for those that are older or with underlying health conditions. We've seen hard situations with the covid-19 patients in our hospitals. Large gatherings just run up the risk of becoming gravely sick or worse."

Thanksgiving is just four days away now. What are your plans?

Is vigilance within us in late November 2020, eight months into this life-changing pandemic and its demand for constant attention lest we fall victim to its aggressive nature?

Americans have certainly faced difficulties before, demonstrating, for example, sacrifices made at home after sending "the boys" off to fight the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese Empire in the Pacific. They understood vigilance to mean a real difference in the war effort. In the years leading up to that, though, many of them had also carried on through a Great Depression and "Dust Bowl" conditions in the Midwest. From Hoovervilles and breadlines to worker strikes and rumors of war, scarcity and uncertainty plagued life in the United States. By the time the war came along, understandably weary Americans could have given up.

But they embraced vigilance and responsibility to a greater, common purpose.

Do we have even a fraction of that within us today in the face of a common, though unseen, enemy?

Maybe we don't. Maybe the generations of Americans alive today have become spoiled. Perhaps the decades of television and now Twitter have eroded our attention spans so much that staying committed to a common mission is simply not within us. Has our online-shopping, delivered-to-our-doorstep culture whittled away our capacity for the kind of long-term dedication necessary to achieve a greater purpose?

What our public health experts are telling us is that this week, this holiday to express thankfulness for the bounty of life, is critical. As vaccines near approval, they're pleading with us to hang on, to never give in, to push through weariness. As sick as we may all be of hearing it, they're urging us to wear masks, to maintain the distances necessary to thwart this virus, to wash hands frequently with soap and warm water and avoid large indoor gatherings.

Yes, we're being asked to sacrifice, but nothing compared to the hardships faced by the World War II generation. Sacrifice isn't missing out on getting to sit down in a favorite restaurant. It can be argued it's a sacrifice to give up a cherished time with family over a celebratory dinner amid prayers of thanksgiving.

But it is unquestionably a sacrifice to take the steps necessary to protect loved ones, even to go so far as to avoid the kinds of large Thanksgiving gatherings we all love. In doing so, we're also protecting the greater community. Maybe, just maybe, if enough of us take such extraordinary steps, we can ease the strain on those who truly sacrifice much -- the front-line first responders, doctors, nurses and support staff of our health care systems. They step into the line of fire every ... single ... day. Can we stay vigilant? Can we sacrifice by shrinking our Thanksgiving Day observances, keeping our distance, wearing masks and washing hands frequently? By thinking small, can we achieve great things together?

Can concern for community overcome tendencies toward wanting what we want and wanting it now?

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To paraphrase Winston Churchill, these are not dark days; these are great days if, according to our own stations in life, we Arkansans and our fellow Americans across the land, play our part in making them memorable, not because of the pandemic's harsh effects, but because of our victorious response.

Thursday will be a watershed moment in this nation's fight against covid-19. Will it be so because indifference or even obstinance helped to feed its spread, or because Americans intensified their vigilance and stole away the virus' capacity to do greater harm?

"This is like a boulder rolling down a hill," Arkansas Secretary of Health José Romero said last week. "There will come a time that we cannot stop it. It will continue to escalate and will eventually overwhelm our health care facilities. Now is the time to act. I cannot stress enough the importance of the Three W's. I'll say it again: Wear your mask, wash your hands and watch your distance."

The flesh is weak, but the spirit can be strong.

Stay vigilant, Arkansas.