AZ an escape from teenage wasteland

For many young people, the risks of the jab pale next to the tedium of life in limbo.

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Stirring the contents of the paella pan on the stove, my eldest mutters: “I want to have the AZ.”

Dragged from the satisfaction of having a reared a son who can cook well, I ask him to repeat what he just said.

“You know the risks,” I say, throwing off my mum’s hat and donning my GP cap.

“Yes!” he snorts impatiently, lanky limbs draped over the kitchen bench, “I am 19”, with the familiar teenage know-it-all roll of his eyes. Long, hairdresser-deprived curls fall over his face. One bony hand sweeps them aside while the other stirs the slowly sizzling Arborio rice in the sparkling new paella pan.

“Do you want me to go through the risks, then?”

“Sure.”

“OK, the risk of having a clot on the pill if you were female is one in 1,000,” I say, reciting the litany of statistics I know by heart through repetition 50 times the previous week, and the week before.

The polite attention he pays me reminds me of the 17-year-old boy I’d consulted three days earlier. Thank you very much, but he’d already made up his mind.

He was sick of being held back by lockdown after lockdown. The roller coaster of going up, being released from home jail and remote learning followed quickly by the precipitous whoosh and free-fall of yet another lockdown. The uncertainty of when each stretch of house detention was going to end. The endless recital of painful numbers every day at 11am. Even our glorious state premier had given up on his North Face jackets, giving up the spotlight to various minions most days.

The pandemic will do that to you and wear you down.

When the aim is to have 80% of the eligible population vaccinated before the use of the blunt instrument of lockdowns recedes, how must it feel in your late teens to see vaccine refusal or unreasonable demands in your older and supposedly betters?

Only a week ago, there was the unedifying sight of a boomer having a teary tantrum in the treatment room. She had booked for AZ but turned up demanding Pfizer for no good reason except for a vague letter supporting this from her GP. “But my GP told me I could have it! I want Pfizer NOW!”

Hell has no greater fury than a geriatric boomer scorned. If she could have, she would have drummed her heels on the Lino floor. OK, boomer. I beat a hasty retreat and let the ever-patient practice manager deal with it.

This boomer had had nothing but an uninterrupted period of economic prosperity. No world war had touched her sunny world. From the sounds of it, no one had ever said the word No to her. So why not demand her vaccine of choice? The “better” vaccine?

Being born just after the tail end of the boomer generation and just sneaking into the start of Gen X myself, I would like to think I feel more the existential angst of the latter, rather than the entitled “gimme” attitude of the former.

“I don’t believe in it,” said the greying gym junkie in his late 50s to me last week. “I stay right away from those areas where covid is,” said another patient entering his golden years. “I’ll be fine. It’s just a bad flu, isn’t it? I think it’s all a conspiracy.”

I was glad at these moments that masks are useful for more than the reason they were designed for.

Meanwhile, my 17-year-old patient grinned behind his own mask. “Sure! When can I have the AZ? Today? Great!” And started rolling up his sleeve as his freckles danced in anticipation. As I keep reciting the statistics of risks of TTS with the AZ vaccination to my own son, he hears me out with the patience of a saint. Indulging me, as his mind is already made up.

If having the AZ vaccine, which is the only one he qualifies for at the moment, means that lockdowns are less likely and his life can go on, he’s all for it. He can see his girlfriend again. He can attend uni lectures in person instead of being holed up in his bedroom all day and all night. He can even play pool with his mates instead of talking to them through the ever-present screen.

“OK, mum, dinner is ready.” He places the fragrant pan with glistening mounds of rice and cherry red charred capsicum on the dining table. As an extra touch, four points of freshly cut lemon stand up like sentinels.

“Thank you, you’ve taught me something new tonight,” I say, and pat his shoulder.