Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Best Self Magazine

    Stepping Off a Bus into An Epidemic

    by Tom Mattson Mar 22, 2020 4 minutes
    Stepping Off a Bus into An Epidemic by Tom Mattson. Photograph of a surgical mask on the ground by Claudio Schwarz
    Photograph by Claudio Schwarz

    In a story of the past repeating itself, a survivor of the 2009 swine flu pandemic in Mexico recalls events eerily similar to today’s coronavirus crisis

    —

    What happens when a flu epidemic hits a city of 20 million people, and authorities fear a pandemic?

    It is Sunday, April 29, 2009. Before I take my second step off the bus in Mexico City inbound from Acapulco, a waiting police officer hands me a face mask. Before I can decide whether to put it on (since only 20% of the people are wearing them), I accidentally drop it on the floor of a nearby subway station. Should I strap

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from Best Self Magazine

    Best Self Magazine3 min read
    How I Overcame Test Anxiety and Actionable Strategies High School Students Can Use to Ace Standardized Exams
    Estimated reading time: 5 minutes My journey from an average SAT scorer to achieving a perfect score and eventually founding Prep Expert has been both challenging and enlightening. Along this path, one of the most significant hurdles I faced was tes
    Best Self Magazine7 min read
    How I Left: Reflections on My Journey into Marriage…and Out
    Estimated reading time: 10 minutes — My grandmother was fourteen when a man in her Southern Italian village asked to marry her. He was twenty-eight, a stranger to Gramma. She said, No! But her mother told her, “Marry him. He’ll take you to America.”
    Best Self Magazine6 min read
    Success & Unworthiness: A Lifelong Struggle with Low Self-Confidence
    Estimated reading time: 8 minutes — I have thought a lot about how I went from low self-esteem at age 15 to…well, low self-esteem at age 78. This admittedly does not make the kind of narrative arc that publishers respond to. But however little progr

    Related