We can’t even stand up and come together as one to fight something that’s killing us for two or three months without falling apart. After all, we need our nails done and a haircut.

Watching Alisa Haushalter, director of the Shelby County Health Department, explain our new reality in a calm, measured and fact-based tone, I came away with more optimism than pessimism about our prospects for overcoming this ruthless pandemic.

Ask your doctor if the test you’re taking is specific to COVID-19 and have him or her review with you its limitations, particularly if the test is not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The past month has meant navigating a matrix of official restrictions and individual decisions, and so will the many months — maybe years — to come. 

Area mayors outlined a "Back-to-business" framework Monday. The framework did not include a definite starting date — and that's a good thing.

One reason riots and massacres can be hard to tell apart is that they usually begin and end in roughly the same way. It’s what happens in between that tells the tale.

Shelby County's path through coronavirus is a faucet not a switch: We'll gradually loosen the local economy, but will be prepared to restrict the flow of activity again if and when the virus spikes. 

As Tennessee begins easing coronavirus restrictions today, Memphis leaders continue to grapple with reopening plans. Has Memphis kept pace with peer cities in the region? And how do its coronavirus response and recovery plans fare with its great rival to the East — Nashville – which already has published a plan to reopen gradually over the coming months?

Downtown projects at One Beale, FedEx Logistics' headquarters and Union Row are working toward completion. What's missing in the pandemic is pedestrian vibrancy.

Many of the heroes who are attending to the sick and dying in our hospitals are immigrants: 25% of physicians in the United States are foreign-born, and 1.5 million immigrants are employed as doctors, nurses and pharmacists. 

A constant factor of Memphis life seems more pressing now than usual: To paraphrase Texas songwriter Joe Ely, we may walk the streets of Memphis, but we’ll have you understand, Tennessee is not entirely the state we’re in.

The dogs are loving COVID-19. We’re here all the time. Here for every squirrel alert. Here to charge the door for every delivery. Here for walks, lap time, ball chasing, floor wrestling, dropping food on the floor. And dancing to “The Monkey Time.”

A true return to pre-COVID-19 life in Memphis will require either a vaccine or the development of herd immunity.

From Sam Cooke to Motown, blues to the British Invasion to his own classic songwriting, Otis Redding’s groundbreaking 1965 album turned everything it touched into one man’s soulful sound. 

Community Legal Center and Memphis Area Legal Services are receiving "panicked calls from people who have been furloughed or fired and who lack money to feed their children and keep a roof over their heads."

The dissension has filtered down to statehouses and into the streets, with thoughtless protesters thumbing their noses at social distancing and demanding that states end stay-at-home orders.

Even as we re-imagine and advocate for 21st-century facilities, we must do so knowing that learning can no longer be contained in the four walls of a classroom, nor should it.

We’ve watched Memphis’ social distancing “grade” drop down to a D. I think it shows how bad we all are at staying away from each other. On a smaller scale – the me scale – I’ve been finding more and more ways to socially distance … with people.

We must not waste this unique opportunity to build a clean, prosperous energy economy by relying again on the same old dirty sources of power.

Impatience was always going to be part of this matrix: There’s a natural urge to get past bad situations without fully dealing with them. But a governmental failure has fed this impatience, and it didn’t come from Nashville.

We anticipate real estate sales and revenue from local income-producing properties to drop substantially as a result of this pandemic. Right now no one knows the outcome.

At the same time I was lamenting our Easter plans, I forced myself to pause and look around. I was spending a Saturday morning playing with my children in the yard and smoking a pork shoulder on the grill. Our current condition had “forced” us to find a way to spend the entire day as a family.

“An Enemy of the People” has been a theater staple for more than a century, but the play has never been more timely. A 2018 production in China was suppressed by the government because audiences were cheering the doctor who is the play's protagonist.

“When it comes to the racial implications of the data, most observers note the correlation between race and pre-existing conditions. Also, I suspect that the relatively large number of African American cases is partly a function of the disparities in wealth and access and distribution of resources.”

The city’s decision to temporarily close Riverside Drive converted the noisy and congested road that divides the Riverwalk from Tom Lee Park into a centerpiece of bustling pedestrian activities.