How do I love AstraZeneca? Let me count the ways

Oh my darlings, my twin Oxford-AstraZeneca shots, nobody understands you like I do. We’ve been through so much together.

At first I didn’t think we’d meet until September 2021. That was what Ottawa seemed to be saying in the early days of the pandemic, that I wasn’t a priority — I was OK with that — but we’d get there eventually.

I was sad but did that stoic thing that helpless people do. I accepted my fate, like when you’re on a carnival rollercoaster: it’s horrible, your eyes are closed, chunky fluids in your hair as the guy ahead loses his lunch, but you know you’ll endure and eventually it will all be over.

Surprise! On March 10, I got my first AstraZeneca vaccination. I was floating a metre above the sidewalk as I headed home from the pharmacy, but kept quiet about it. Almost no one else was vaccinated then, which was shaming since I felt others needed it more than me.

But my days passed in the company of my new friend, Claerwen AZ (named after my favourite painter Claerwen James). Time passed. I noted the 12week span that followed, hoping Claerwen would build rather than fade out — just like love itself — and then at 11 weeks, I was made whole. I named my second AZ shot Alison after my favourite former editor.

Look, I name things. My Roomba is Chloe (no reason) and my expensive, broken, alleged COVID air purifier is Doris Kilman — look it up.

But as usual, time went on, and people’s resolve to be civilized and patient in an international crisis went splat. CBC.ca, current home of hard-luck stories, interviewed a Calgary couple in Abu Dhabi desperate to get home — Canada wouldn’t let them in with their Chinese vaccine Sinopharm without a two-week quarantine. Quarantines are useful; that’s how you lose your lockdown pie weight.

Another Canadian, a Winnipeg nurse living in Moscow, got the Russian vaccine Sputnik, also not on Canada’s approved list. UNFAIR, they said. A doctor agreed.

“You can’t just say, ‘You have to get the vaccine we want,’ when it’s not available and when that country has no contract to get it and then expect people to have it when they travel in.”

But you can say that. They just did. Sputnik hasn’t been sufficiently studied yet and proven safe and effective. To be honest — I shouldn’t say this but you know I will — the only really reliable drug I associate with Russia is Novichok. It’s a poison.

And do I trust the Chinese government’s Sinopharm — vaccines really shouldn’t have national brand names is my thinking — when it hides its Wuhan lab history from international scientists and when it keeps Canadian prisoners, the two Michaels, hostage?

Then I learn that the U.S. won’t allow in people double-vaccinated with my precious AZs, which means I can’t get Springsteen tickets, but then I never could anyway.

It may be that President Biden thinks my AZs — the twins — aren’t as good as certain other vaccines. Like the Moderna, which sounds like a menstrual product, or the Pfizer, which I am not sure I can pronounce. Is it German? I’m old-school on that.

As for Johnson & Johnson, they make talc baby powder, the spark that lit thousands of ovarian cancer lawsuits. If they can’t make baby powder safe and effective, and their Aveeno pump bottles leave a third of the lotion unreachable, one does wonder about their vaccines.

That said, I like J&J’s Visine, and their Tylenol remains a lifelong friend, but I shall continue to be unreasonable about my AZ twins’ unreasonably glamorous rivals.

If you don’t like your country enough to quarantine for it, maybe you should just stay and breathe deeply — though not around old canisters of J&J baby powder.

I know that makes no sense, but neither do complaints. The problem isn’t hotels or concert tickets, the problem is a possible horrible death by coronavirus. The first week I finally spent with family after the two-week safety interval was beyond calculations of material worth.

As for comparative efficacies, yes, some numbers are higher than others. But nothing reaches 100 per cent. What we all need — from AZ to everything else — is luck. No one can help you there.