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 （[email protected]） to Richard Murray （[email protected]）， Kitty McNaught （[email protected]） and Aaron Pike （[email protected]） 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 （[email protected]） 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 （[email protected]） 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 （[email protected]） 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.”