On April 3, Gov. Pete Ricketts issued a warning to the people of Nebraska: “If you want to see football this fall, you’d better be staying home right now.”

The novel coronavirus was ravaging the East Coast, and it was only a matter of time before it impacted nearly every little dot on the map. In Grand Island, a central-Nebraska city of 51,000, it had already arrived. (See where COVID-19 cases are growing and declining in the U.S.)

Danny Lemos, a 39-year-old manager of a tire store, was certain that it was allergies, because every year, when Nebraska’s barren winter expanse gives way to budding trees, Lemos coughs.

But it wasn’t allergies. Within weeks, he was life-flighted to a