If there is a thread of positivity in the grim shroud of the looming pandemic, it is the way the Island’s elected leaders have come together to deal with the coronavirus threat.

More heartening still, Martha’s Vineyard has accomplished something equally rare: found common purpose with its sister island Nantucket.

Concerned that Gov. Charlie Baker’s state of emergency order announced Monday for Massachusetts fell short of the kind of widespread shutdown the crisis demands, officials from every Island town worked together to craft their own common directive, based on one that Nantucket adopted.

Moving with breathtaking speed, five Island boards of selectmen together with five island boards of health had passed nearly identical stay-at-home orders by the end of the day Tuesday. By midday Thursday, Aquinnah signed on, making the order Islandwide.

The same fast, coordinated work was at play on Wednesday afternoon after the governor’s office muscled in a with a letter advising towns that their construction bans were too strict. Within hours, the six Island towns and Nantucket had shot back with a strong defense of why the islands should go their own way. The letter was hand delivered by the Islands’ state senator, Julian Cyr.

The notion of town autonomy is woven deep into the fabric of the Vineyard. God help the newcomer who suggests regional government might be more efficient than six separate town boards of selectmen.

But faced with an unprecedented emergency — and a governor who thinks he knows better — the men and women elected to represent Aquinnah, Chilmark, Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, Tisbury, West Tisbury and, yes, Nantucket, came together quickly and decisively to put the health and welfare of Islanders first.

That’s one bit of good to come from this harrowing time.