Glasgow, United Kingdom
Day 16
No one is listening to me. I’m starting to think I’m going mad. I’ll send an e-mail and wonder afterward, as it goes unanswered, if I actually sent it. I’m being gaslit by the entire Scottish medical establishment. Gartnavel fired me today, which makes sense. I haven’t been to work in fifteen days. There is absolutely no way I’m prioritizing the health service over my own children. The woman on the phone, some numpty called Karen (of course she was called Karen) said, “You should be ashamed of yourself, abandoning your patients in their time of need.” I asked Karen what she did for a living: she’s an administrator. “What exactly would you know about my patients’ needs?” I hissed, feeling the curious eyes of my children on my back as I moved into a different room and closed the door behind me. “This virus doesn’t respond to treatment, doesn’t respond to antivirals. Nothing makes a difference. I could be the Virgin Mary herself and I wouldn’t be able to save anyone.” Then she hung up.
Well, technically I told her to go fuck herself and then she hung up. Probably to phone some other doctor desperately trying to save his or her family and bully them into coming to work. Will’s just been ignoring the phone calls, which is for the best. He’s a terrible people pleaser. I still sometimes wonder if we’re only married because after three years he was getting a bit nervy about upsetting me if he didn’t propose, rather than because he loved me so much he had to marry me.
I’ve now written to fourteen newspapers around the world. I have sent Health Protection Scotland eight e-mails and called twelve times, not a single one of which has been answered. I’ve e-mailed the WHO in London and Geneva nine times. I. Am. Screaming. Into. The. Void.
The news is showing the descent of Glasgow and Edinburgh into the nightmare of a pandemic. The army has been brought in to drive ambulances, fire engines and trucks carrying food to and from farms and factories and supermarkets. Makes sense when you think about it. Have you ever seen a female truck driver? Dundee and Aberdeen have just announced the closure of schools on Friday, which might be the most laughable public health policy I’ve ever heard of. Yes, that’s a good idea, let’s slow down the spread of this almost-always fatal virus just a wee bit. Give it a long weekend, see if that cheers it up so it won’t kill the Primary One class on Monday.
The people in charge need to listen to me. They are wasting precious time. I’m cooped up in my house with sons whose fear grows by the day as they follow the mushrooming panic of the Plague on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, their phones always glowing in their faces. Charlie said yesterday, his thirteen-year-old voice sounding far higher and more like a child’s than it has in years, “Mum, Taylor died.” My first thought was Who’s Taylor? But that wouldn’t have been a helpful response. “He actually died,” Charlie said in wonder before going up to his room, playing unbearably loud music and shouting at me as I came in every ten minutes to “check if you wanted anything to drink” (check if he was trying to kill himself).
Sometimes being a doctor makes me a worse parent emotionally but a better parent practically, and this is one of those times. I never think, “Oh, he’ll be fine.” In the course of my career I’ve seen over a hundred girls, boys, men, women who’ve killed themselves in minutes, brought to hospital still warm by parents and spouses who never imagined they would kill themselves. The ones who everyone was worried about go straight to the morgue. They tend to plan it better. My sons are alive because I have somehow kept this awful disease out of this house and away from them. But they are starving for my care and affection and I cannot give it to them. I don’t hug them. I don’t cook their food. I don’t go near them if I can possibly help it. I cannot be too careful when their lives are at stake.
Every minute that my e-mails go unanswered is another minute away from a vaccine. This Plague is not just going to flit away into thin air. It’s only going to get worse, and everybody is wasting time. I’m a doctor, not a pathologist. I can’t fix this, but if no one listens to me, then how are we ever going to fix it?
Will thinks I’m being silly. He thinks that the authorities are working on this “behind the scenes” and actually, they just haven’t announced it. I say bollocks. Everyone I’ve ever met involved in public health policy or politics would drown their own granny to get some good press. They would all be crowing about “having this all in hand” and “the finest minds in the country working on a solution.” There’d be a task force. There’s always a task force. If anybody was listening to me, I’d know it, but instead there is only bleak, awful silence and time being wasted.
E-mail from Leah Spicer (l.spicer@healthprotectionscotland.org) to Richard Murray (r.murray@healthprotectionscotland.org), Kitty McNaught (k.mcnaught@healthprotectionscotland.org) and Aaron Pike (a.pike@healthprotectionscotland.org) at 9:20 a.m. on November 19, 2025
Richard, Kitty, Aaron,
Please can one of you call me urgently. No response from Daniel in Edinburgh. I’m swamped here. Louise hasn’t come to work all week. I’m trying to finalize infection protocol but unsure of best way forward as it is gender neutral but we need different policies for men and women now? All hospitals in Greater Glasgow have declared an emergency and Queen Elizabeth’s has started turning away men from A and E. Mobile is 07884647584. Please call as soon as you can. Very, very urgent.
E-mail from Richard Murray (r.murray@healthprotectionscotland.org) at 9:20 a.m. on November 19, 2025
Thank you for your e-mail. I am currently out of the office with an illness. If you require urgent assistance, please contact another member of my team.
E-mail from Kitty McNaught (k.mcnaught@healthprotectionscotland.org) at 9:20 a.m. on November 19, 2025
I am out of the office on compassionate leave. I will reply to your e-mail on my return.
E-mail from Aaron Pike (a.pike@healthprotectionscotland.org) at 9:20 a.m. on November 19, 2025
I am currently out of the office due to ill health. Please try contacting another member of your case team if your query is urgent.
ARTICLE IN THE TIMES OF LONDON ON NOVEMBER 20, 2025
“Exclusive: Scottish doctor who treated first patient says ‘This is the new plague and it’s only getting worse’”
by Eleanor Meldrum
I wish I could tell you what Dr. Amanda Maclean is like in person but I can’t. She wouldn’t meet with me out of fear that I would be a host of the “Plague,” as she calls it, a mysterious virus with a high mortality rate that has quickly caused havoc in Scotland. There are also a number of reported cases in Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds and London. When I assured Amanda over e-mail that I was not infected, she responded, “You have no way of knowing that. Women are asymptomatic hosts. When I treated two of the first cases I quickly realized that the only link between them was a female nurse.”
If Amanda’s intention is to worry me, she succeeds. Hearing this, I start to look back over my interactions with the men I care about with a different perspective: my boyfriend (kissed on the lips this morning), my dad (saw him for coffee at lunchtime, hugged him good-bye), my brother (seeing him for dinner in two days’ time).
“Part of the reason this has spread so fast is that women and men are both carrying it. Women never know and men don’t show symptoms for two days. There’s hundreds of thousands of people walking around spreading the virus and they don’t even know it.” I respond by asking why there aren’t more reported cases then? Surely if, as Amanda says, there are hundreds of thousands of people walking around spreading this disease, then there would be hundreds of thousands, millions of cases?
She is resolute. “There will be, but there’s also already far more cases than currently reported. The Plague can easily appear to be a case of sepsis or other fast-acting illness.” She points me in the direction of a news report from November 18, 2025, in The Dubai Daily, a British expat newspaper. It reports the “unusual death of three men who all recently returned from a golfing trip in Scotland at the Gleneagles Resort.” They flew from Glasgow Airport to Dubai. Amanda is incredulous that this has not been defined as an outbreak already. “The WHO are asleep at the wheel. Health Protection Scotland is no better. The way they have failed to deal with this is an absolute outrage.”
Doesn’t she mean are failing to deal with it?
“They have failed. There is very little we can do now that the Plague has escaped Glasgow. It’s too late to track who went where. The ease with which it spread from the first patient I treated, a man from the Isle of Bute, to a nurse in the hospital who then passed it on to patients is remarkable. I was in touch with Health Protection Scotland by phone and e-mail on November 3. I have sent tens of e-mails to HPS and the WHO and been ignored at every turn. If I had been listened to back then we might have been able to set up effective quarantines and bring it under control.”
I tell Amanda that she sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theorist. She assures me that she knows, but that she’ll soon be proved right. Amanda thinks that the disease is “genuinely destined to ravage the male population if we don’t create a vaccine soon. We needed a treatment yesterday.”
So, what can we do to reduce infection risk? “Do what I’m doing. Stay home, whether you’re a man or a woman, stay home. Avoid crowds, avoid public transport, for the love of God don’t get on a plane. Anyone can be infected, so you need to interact with as few people as possible. Neither my sons nor I have left our house since November 4.”
I can’t help but ask at this point how this can be the case when Amanda is a consultant in the A and E Department at Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow’s West End. Don’t her patients need her now, more than ever?
Amanda sighs heavily before she answers. “There is absolutely nothing any doctor can do to prevent this virus from killing a boy or man. Nothing. When we treated one of the first patients who died, a young, fit, healthy man in his twenties, we gave him everything: antivirals, antibiotics, fluids, steroids. Nothing worked, it didn’t matter. I’m not going to put my family at risk for the lost cause of saving men who can’t be saved. I won’t apologize for keeping my sons alive. Why do you think none of the advice from official agencies has told people to go to hospital to seek treatment?”
I finish my conversation with Amanda thoroughly unnerved. After we’ve spoken, I go through the official statements made by Health Protection Scotland and Public Health England. She’s right. Nowhere does it say, “Go to hospital and seek treatment” or even “Seek medical advice.” The only advice is to stay home, the obvious implication being that men should stay home and die.
Before speaking to Amanda I had hoped to answer many of my questions about the Plague and its possible impact on hospitals, schools, maybe even how the science behind it works. After speaking to her, I have more questions than I could have imagined, but she can’t answer any of them. I don’t know if anyone can. How bad will the Plague become? How many men will die? Could the authorities be doing more? What, if anything, can they now do? Will my family be safe? Will this be the end of us?