I wake up in the morning spooning a book, my head resting on my phone. I scroll through Instagram. I should see boozy New Year's Eve parties, couples kissing at the count of one, blurry fireworks, friends clinking mimosas, travel snaps from Amsterdam and Phuket.

But all I see are screenshots with those fateful words from NSW Health. Detected. Positive.

I only knew one person who had this virus before the past week, a 24-year-old Canberran I interviewed who nearly died on a ventilator.

Now, Omicron seems to have taken a perverse interest in the mid-20s, inner-west Sydney media crowd, spreading through them faster than a salacious rumour. Some are barely symptomatic, others say they've never felt worse in their life. The virus is truly a lottery, which no one bought a ticket for.

A few spend Christmas locked in their room or an apartment, sheets covered in sickly sweat and with barely enough energy to pick at the potatoes passed through the door. Others don't have it, but they were at the wrong party or in the wrong bed and are quarantining as a close contact.

I feel my chest tighten and thoughts multiply. It's New Year's Day so this should just be some hang-xiety, but my crisp sheets smell like laundry. This is rona-xiety, and it's starting to hit me harder than the shots of tequila I didn't take last night.

Of all the victims in this pandemic, little sympathy extends to the young Australians who wish they were at a music festival. We are very unlikely to die or get seriously sick; we live in a stable nation with healthcare and welfare. In many parts of the country, we can still congregate, study and live a fairly normal life.

And when we locked down the country in 2020, most of us did it diligently for the vulnerable people in our community. The immunocompromised, the disabled and elderly. Cancelling your 21^st was a small sacrifice to keep grandma alive.

But young people in Australia between 20-29 years old are the most likely to have caught the virus. In the UK, about 371,000 people under the age of 34 have self-reported long COVID.

If three jabs are needed to be protected against Omicron, very few young Australians are fully immunised. We were the last adults to get offered the needle, so we'll be among the last to get a booster.

The biggest hotspots, like nightclubs and gyms, are full of us (I mean, not me). Blaming an 18-year-old for getting COVID at Fiction is like shaming a middle-aged man who caught it at The Capital Men's Club.

IN OTHER OPINION:

Last year I read a story about Year 12 private school students petitioning to have a graduation ceremony. I rolled my eyes at what I thought was a selfish lack of perspective; helicoptered teens who'd never suffered real adversity. As the months go on, I've delayed travel, friends' birthdays are cancelled over and over again and plans are as predictable as the weather. It doesn't matter, and I don't mind.

But I am starting to get it now. Youth is full of rituals and milestones. Lasts and firsts all bunched together, one after another so fast you can barely come up for air.

Failed exams, hangovers, heartbreaks. Cheap airplane tickets, Bali belly, two-minute noodles in crappy hostels.

I wish. Maybe 2023.