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[title]This article does not constitute medical advice. It is the opinion of the writer.
Vax and the City: Every public health official in Australia agrees that mass vaccination is the only way out of this crisis. We at Time Out recommend that you get vaccinated as soon as you can, if that is appropriate for your own health. Please speak to a medical professional about what is right for you. Here's what you need to know about how to get a vaccine right now.
“You might feel a small scratch,” the nurse told me, but I didn’t even feel that. Half a painless second and it was done. Double jabbed. While the pandemic is far from over, I had just crossed the finish line. But I’d have to wait for so many others to catch up before celebrating this victory.
During Sydney’s first lockdown, the prospect of any vaccine being developed was pure theory. It almost feels like a betrayal of my former self that now, finally being inoculated feels strangely anticlimactic.
Sitting on my sofa having just arrived home from the GP’s surgery – a subtle ache now registering in my left shoulder beneath a small round band-aid – I logged in to my Medicare account. There it was on my phone screen: proof of vaccination. A simple green square with a big white tick and my name all in capital letters, MAXIM H BOON.
And that was it. Achievement unlocked (albeit in lockdown). I’m not exactly sure what I expected to happen once I'd received my second dose. A ritual mask-burning ceremony? A telegram of congratulations from Dr Kerry Chant like the queen sends to centenarians? But if I had to hone in on the root of this post-vax ennui, it might be because it was so damn matter of fact.
After 20 months in limbo, of not knowing when I might see my parents again, wrestling with the anxiety and shame and paranoia of every runny nose or sore throat, pickling my skin with hand san, regretting not living larger when we could, fearing living too large when we can, the frustration and irrational rage and exhaustion of it all, of hanging off stats and numbers and acronyms and vaccine brands and pinning each day’s hopes to 11am, it’s all over, just like that? No fireworks and delighted Ewoks dancing around as the Death Star burns. No parade with sailors pashing nurses in the street as confetti rains down. Just me and my phone in my silent living room, and a couple of CCs of a medical marvel in my arm.
In the hours after receiving my second dose, I was relieved when the first flu-ish symptoms began to emerge. Excited even. There’s a part of me, I think, that needed to earn this new immunity, to put in some hard yards. A part that believed that without some kind of visceral feedback, how could I be certain it was real?
It's human nature to quietly deny the fact that none of us know what's going to happen; otherwise how could we go to bottomless brunch, or spend too much money on ridiculous shoes, neck shots at 3am, or do any of the silly, stupid, pointless things that make life worth living? When the pandemic first turned everything upside down, it had the effect of bringing that truth into sobering focus, albeit through the lizard brained-lens of self-preservation. Confronted by so much paralysing uncertainty, our limbic systems seemed to drip feed us the adrenaline we needed to maintain a meerkat level of hyper-vigilance; a kind of functional, existential hysteria with added Zoom calls, sourdough starters and drinking too much.
When I received my first AstraZeneca shot at the beginning of July, it was with that same flight or fight reflex very much engaged. I had to push through the headwinds of inconsistent warnings, fickle eligibility criteria and more than one GP who seemed determined to prevent me from getting jabbed at all. I had to fight for my appointment, and even then I was told repeatedly that the AstraZeneca vaccine could very well kill me and that getting vaccinated wouldn’t end the lockdown, so why rush? It took a not-so-passive aggressive level of heels-dug-in belligerence to get access to a jab that had already saved millions of people around the world. But two months later, I didn't even need to make a phone call to book jab two, just a few quick clicks in an online booking form. Now that I’m vaxxed, it's like those muscles have finally been unclenched, that "just keep swimmin'" energy has been released, replaced with the impatient, moody griping of a hungry toddler moaning “are we nearly there yet?”
I don't know if this post-vax existential funk is atypical, although a quick straw poll amongst my fully vaccinated friends and colleagues suggests it's probably surprisingly common. So what now, for the double jabbed with an excess of 'meh'? As I have said to many of my nearest and dearest in recent weeks, it’s important that we're kind to ourselves. Australia's pandemic has been perhaps less brutal in some respects than that experienced elsewhere in the world, but arguably, that's left us less prepared for the coming status quo of "Covid normal".
Community, compassion, and staying the course are going to be essential as we go through the growing pains needed to catch up to a reality much of the rest of the world is already desensitised to. But this too shall pass, and while we're not there yet, the more of us that cross the dose two finish line, the sooner we can get back to going to bottomless brunch, buying ridiculous shoes, and necking shots at 3am.