Officials today angrily denied that they had been slow to react when members of the public reported sightings of a dead democracy.

Contingency plans have been put in place after tests verified that the Scottish Parliament had died from the deadly DGAF (Dinnae Gie A Fuck) Virus.

An initial 5 mile protection zone was set up around the Holyrood Parliament and only MSPs and the criminally insane were allowed through the buffer cordons.

Members of the public were asked to report sightings of MSPs and cautioned that although it would be legal to shoot them on sight, stoning them to death would be more fun.

The DGAF virus does not currently pose a large-scale threat to normal human beings as it cannot easily be transmitted between humans unless they suffer from a surfeit of bullshit, arrogance and conceit.

Scotland's chief Mental Health Officer, Dr. E. I. Adio, has confirmed that in the event of an outbreak of DGAF in the Parliament, that a mass cull of MSPs would be implemented. Best practice would be to destroy the site of infection, usually by conflagration.

Dr. Adio urged members of the public who had been in contact with their MSP recently to visit a psychiatrist as soon as possible.

There have been widespread calls for the First Minister, Shagger McConnell to return from his free annual holiday in New York to take control of the situation.

Dr. Adio confirmed that leadership and a widespread period of doing very little would be the best way of preventing a mass outbreak and that Mr. McConnell was one of the leading practitioners of doing nothing, although he did tend to make a lot of noise while doing so.

VisitScotland, the private sector tourism company funded by public money advised that they would be seeking additional funding if visitor numbers were affected.