Lucy Carne: Give under-40s Pfizer now not September

Ineligible for Pfizer and refused AstraZeneca, under-40s who want to be vaccinated have been pushed to back of the queue, but Covid-19 in your 30s is real, writes Lucy Carne.

“It’s like a heavy shadow sitting on your chest.”

That’s how Amanda James describes having coronavirus.

The 34-year-old Brisbane marketing professional isn’t eligible for a Pfizer vaccine and the Queensland Government won’t let her have AstraZeneca.

She got Covid and months later is struggling with the lingering health impacts.

“This is not the flu,” Amanda tells me. “I’ve had the flu. Covid is serious. People need to know. Everyone needs to take this seriously.”

Amanda James, 34, in the Royal Brisbane Hospital with Covid-19. Picture: supplied

Having worked in Hong Kong for five years, Amanda spent 12 months trying to come home.

In Hong Kong she managed to avoid the virus, due to strict lockdowns, incessant mask wearing and wiping her feet on a bleach-soaked towel at her front door.

But having forked out $10,000 to finally secure a seat on a flight, she contracted the virus at Singapore’s Changi Airport in March, waiting to connect to Brisbane.

“I was sitting in an empty room and heard the loudspeaker announce that a flight from the US was landing and I panicked,” she said.

“Suddenly the room was full of people and so many of them weren’t wearing masks and I had to wait with them.”

In hotel quarantine in Brisbane’s Bowen Hills, she noticed her chest hurt, but put it down to being stuck in airconditioning with no fresh air.

But when Amanda discovered she was a close contact of a Covid-positive fitness trainer, she called Queensland Health and begged for her test to be brought forward.

The hospital room where Amanda James was treated for Covid-19. Picture: supplied

She was positive, but genomic testing (“no one tells you that’s an anal swab,” she says), revealed it was the B1.617 variant, first detected in India, which she caught from a traveller at Changi.

“Mentally, it’s terrifying,” Amanda says. “Then you start spiralling. I called my dad, who works in a hospital, and asked if I would be on a ventilator.”

She stayed for 10 days in an isolation room in the infectious disease ward at the Royal Brisbane Hospital.

“I was the only Australian on the ward,” she said. “All the other patients with Covid were from PNG, older and from China.”

She suffered fevers, begging nurses for 12 blankets. Her food was delivered through an antechamber. Her cousin dropped off chocolate and Hemingway novels.

But it has been the residual hangover of Covid, that has been the hardest.

“I lost my sense of smell for two months,” she said. “It finally came back the other night when I could smell mum’s lasagne.”

“You feel like you’ve got no gas left in the tank. The exhaustion has been hard.”

Young, healthy and fit, Amanda regularly hiked, ran Hong Kong’s stairs, boxed and played netball.

The government’s confronting Covid advertisement that unfairly depicts a woman aged under-40 struggling to breathe. Picture: Supplied.

But after Covid, a 20-minute walk was a struggle.

But it has been witnessing Australia’s bungled “joke” of a vaccine roll out, snap border closures and friends still stuck overseas that has shocked Amanda.

“People don’t understand how lucky Australia has been, but it’s extraordinary that they couldn’t get a vaccine rollout sorted,” she said. “I have so many friends who want to get vaccinated and can’t.”

For Australians aged under-40, the rage and frustration at being punted to the back of the vaccination roll out is palpable.

Most want to be vaccinated. They want it now, not in “September or October” when the COVID-19 vaccine task force has speculated they will finally be eligible for Pfizer or Moderna.

In Sydney, savvy under-40s are registering for their jabs through a rogue website. Young adults in Brisbane are simply fronting clinics from 6am in the hope a Pfizer shot may be kindly proffered.

It shouldn’t be so bloody hard for under-40s to get vaccinated.

But 16 months into this pandemic and a bungled jab rollout, fearmongering and contradictory messaging from federal and state leaders has left under-40s overlooked and unprotected.

“Covid-19 can affect anyone,” the government’s terrifying new TV ad says, featuring a young woman (unfairly aged under 40) struggling to breathe on a ventilator.

The virus doesn’t discriminate, but the vaccine rollout does, you feel like shouting back at the screen.

Of the 18 people in intensive care in Sydney on Friday, one was in their 20s, one in their 30s and two in their 40s. Five of the 18 patients required ventilators and only one was vaccinated.

Ask your GP, under-40s are told, but most tell you to come back in September.

With Australia short on Pfizer supplies, the PM says for under-40s to ask for AstraZeneca. Which is fine, except medical professionals including the AMA, which represents the nation’s doctors, says to follow the advice of immunisation experts which recommends Pfizer for people under 60.

The lunacy of this vaccine hypocrisy is mind boggling.

It’s time to open up Pfizer to all ages and stop this discriminatory age-based wait list.

“Getting Covid in your 30s is real,” Amanda says.

If someone is willing to roll up their sleeve, regardless of their age, surely we should just let them have it.