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?
CATHERINE
London, United Kingdom
Day 35
It’s the first year of my life I’m not looking forward to Christmas. How can I when the apocalypse seems to be dawning? The shops are continuing on as if nothing is happening, determined to avoid the financial ruin of closure in December, a month of gold. How can people go into the Liberty Christmas Department and spend ￡30 on a sequined robin decoration when our husbands, our sons, our fathers, our friends, might all be dying?
Theodore is blissfully unaware. I used to worry about having such an unobservant child—he would tell me he couldn’t find something when it was literally right in front of him—but now it seems like a blessing. If he senses my unease, he isn’t showing it but our house is full of fear. You can practically see it seeping through the letterbox. The first case was only five weeks ago in Glasgow but it’s already everywhere. There are reports of cases in every city: Manchester, Newcastle, Bristol. London is erupting with it. St. Thomas’s Hospital announced an emergency yesterday, so terrifyingly close it might as well be next door. Our small, lovely house in Crystal Palace used to feel like a haven from the stresses of daily life. Now it is a puny, insignificant life raft. It cannot do what I need it to. It cannot assure me that my husband and son will be safe.