For two years, this Washington island has grappled with the long reach of COVID

Tony Johnson sits on his bed with his dog, Dash, in the one-room home he shares with his wife, Karen Johnson, in a care facility in Burlington, Wash. on April 13, 2022. Johnson was one of the first people to get COVID-19 in Washington state in April of 2020. His left leg had to be amputated due to lack of wound care after he developed blood clots in his feet while on a ventilator. (Lynn Johnson for NPR)

It didn't take long for the pandemic to arrive on Whidbey Island. That pastoral slice of the Pacific Northwest meanders through the upper reaches of Puget Sound, coming within just 30 miles of downtown Seattle. It was this corner of the country that alerted Americans to the reality that a virus doesn't abide by international borders and a global pandemic had made landfall in the U.S.

The very first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. was here, in Washington state. And by early March of 2020, the virus had torn through a nursing home in a quiet suburb on the eastern edges of Lake Washington. That outbreak marked some of the very first known U.S. deaths of the pandemic. As ambulances shuttled those patients to a nearby hospital, the rest of the country was left to wonder: When would those scenes of panic and disease reach their hometowns, their hospitals, their parents, siblings and spouses?