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During four long months of lockdown in Sydney, Darcy Altavilla and his housemates distracted themselves by planning for the "best summer ever" from their sharehouse in Newtown.
Among the list of "silly" plans for things they would do once freedom came, jotted in notes on his phone, was taking their lockdown hobby of pickling onions to farmers markets "for a laugh" and perfecting barbecued corn on the cob.
Instead, the 25-year-old found himself leaving 10 days of COVID-19 isolation on New Year's Eve, after likely contracting the virus at birthday drinks for a friend.
"Missing out on New Year, from everyone I heard it was pretty mediocre," he says. "It was nice to know that just because I had gotten COVID, I hadn't missed out and everyone else wasn't living it up while I was locked away."
Altavilla, who graduated university last year, is one of thousands of 20-somethings who have contracted Omicron since it hit Australian shores in early December.
Conversations about how to manage a sharehouse case, what is the appropriate level of risk and whether much-anticipated events should be skipped have been playing out in 20-something group chats for weeks.
With the government's increasing reliance on personal responsibility, the uncertainty has only grown as messages about a new positive case among friends come thick and fast and "vlogs" from COVID-19 isolation flood Instagram. The question of "how many people do you know with COVID" has become standard at gatherings. Thankfully, the majority of infections have been mild.
According to NSW Health figures, around one in 12 people aged between 20 and 29, or about eight per cent of people in this age group, have caught the virus over the past month — about double the prevalence reported among people in their 30s.
And with the backlog in PCR testing and a growing reliance on rapid antigen tests, the true share of young adults infected is likely to be much, much higher.
"It's definitely a minimum, it could be double that," says Deakin University epidemiologist Catherine Bennett. But this explosion of cases in young people is far from surprising, she says. The rapid spread of the Omicron strain may also mean it soon starts to run out of susceptible people in their 20s, who are the most likely to transmit it widely.
"If you do see [the virus] burn itself out in that age group, because everyone's pretty much exposed or it just slows down, it makes a difference to the whole community," Professor Bennett says.
"Once you've had Omicron you've shifted your immune response … so it should then change your likelihood of having Omicron again, it should help protect you from Delta, and it might even give us protection from the next variant."
A different sense of hope
After almost two years of "COVID-zero" mindset, few expected that Australia would find itself recording more than 100,000 cases a day — as happened on Saturday — but for Altavilla, having recovered from the virus has led to a new-found sense of hope.
That comes from the knowledge that he is less likely to catch the virus again, at least for a little while. "Having that sense of protection now is actually really comforting," he says. "I don't feel so worried about being exposed now that I've got it over with."
Fellow Sydney resident Grace Franki, 24, shared a similar sentiment after catching COVID-19 from a friend earlier this week. Where previously their biggest concern was passing on the virus to others, they now feel "almost relieved" that they'll no longer have to worry as much about it.
"The way I've felt for a little while is I want to minimise my risk for others, but I'm happy with a higher risk for myself," they say. As cases were rising in December, they were still going out on the weekends but working from home two days a week and doing regular rapid antigen tests before going into the office.
"Actually getting COVID, in some ways it allows me to minimise the risks I'm most worried about."
Like Altavilla finishing university, Franki says they've gone through major life changes since the beginning of the pandemic — which has meant figuring out a lot of things "in the hypothetical", like what it's like to work in an office and that they really like to party.
"I spent a lot of this year being incredibly depressed, isolated and lonely … a lot of delayed hope was pinned on this summer," they say.
"I moved to a great, new house the day lockdown ended and since then there's been a sense of hope and upward trajectory … mostly in the sense of an unbridled, summer of fun on the horizon."
Part of this meant taking a month of leave from work, which they'll now have spent half of in isolation as a close contact or with COVID-19. They didn't book any big trips but hoped to be able to spend the time seeing friends.
"I just planned a staycation, because I don't need to go away, my life here is awesome," they say, "I just want to be able to live it, and not work and not have COVID."
While the pandemic has changed the way we all live, young Australians have been some of the hardest hit. Universities went online, gap years were cancelled, and remote working added previously unheard of challenges to entering the workforce.
Industries most decimated by lockdowns, such as hospitality and the arts, are also largely made up of young, casual workers. And on Friday, despite previous assurances of a "bright summer", NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet announced new restrictions that would see nightclubs closed once again and singing and dancing banned in pubs.
One venue that has felt the brunt of rising cases is The Carrington pub Sydney's inner east. With the majority of their frontline staff under 30, they've had to manage unpredictable staffing shortages alongside reduced trade and inconsistent supply chains.
"Because they have to isolate, they can't work and their only source of income is working in a pub," says general manager Alyce Murphy.
As many of her staff are university students and receive Centrelink's student allowance, it means they aren't eligible for disaster relief. "So they're having to be in situations where they can't support themselves, they can't pay rent, so not only is it financially impacting them, it's a huge mental toll."
Why 20-somethings are driving the wave
In pandemic modelling, people aged 20 to 39 are typically referred to as the "core group", Professor Bennett says, because it's the age group where you see the "most mixing, that's the nature of their socialising and work".
But over the summer period, she says there's a slightly different dynamic. Compared to people in their 30s, who may have kids of their own and tend to go away with one other household or family members, 20-somethings are more likely to gather in big groups. "It's the ones who are out socialising, holidaying in big groups that don't always live together, that's where it moves quickly," she says.
The timing of the pandemic, in the lead up to the "silly season" with pubs and nightclubs back open, also gave "Omicron a very happy start in NSW", she says. "It kicked off really quickly because we had multiple superspreader events concurrently, and all of those events send people out to other venues … because it's not a once a week outing."
University of Sydney epidemiologist James McCaw says Omicron's spread among young, generally healthy people is in line with what is being seen internationally. As a result, for weeks he's been calling for the temporary closure of nightclubs and similar venues.
"The vast majority of those younger people, particularly if they're double vaccinated or boosted, are not going to get severely ill," he says. "The reason we still need to slow the spread in that youngest adult age group is because they are the catalyst for infection in communities where we sill see morbidity, hospitalisation, and death."
There are also practical impediments for many young people once they come in contact with the virus.
For one, they're more likely to live in big sharehouses not tied to a family unit. Franki lives in a six-person house in Marrickville, with each person creating another potential for another week of isolation.
"Isolating properly in the house would be super, super, super tough," they say. Luckily, when they tested positive alongside one of their housemates this week they were able to move to their parent's house while they were out of the state. "It's a pretty lucky situation really," they say.
Not having a car can also make it difficult to access testing clinics, with many of the centres open over the break drive-through only.
In the midst of a COVID-19 infection, Sydney resident Bella, who did not wish to use her last name, told ABC News she and her partner were forced to walk half an hour to the nearest testing clinic only to find it closed.
"We show up there after walking there for half an hour and it's closed, it's totally desolate," the 23-year-old says.
"It's not only an issue of places not being open, but people thinking that they're open and being messed around."
Professor Bennett warns that because of these reasons, and a general tendency for testing rates to go up with age, the true number of positive cases in this age group is more likely to go under-reported.
"The more worried you are about the virus, and your own reaction to the virus, the more you will get tested," she says. "For someone who is living with an infection, and they've got to quarantine anyway, if they don't have symptoms or they're very mild, it doesn't actually matter if they get a positive result or not, it doesn't change what they do."
For Franki, part of the changing mood of the pandemic has been an elevated risk tolerance among their social networks. Where previously, every social event was preceded by calculating the likelihood of spreading the virus, now more people are letting their guard down.
"I think a lot of us are on the same page," they say. "Not having to carry anxiety about the fact I am less worried about other people has been nice, but also the fact that other people are actively assuming the same risk."
But what this year will bring, as we enter a new stage of the pandemic, is still far from certain. After two years of disruption, Altavilla says he planned to spend 2022 "making memories" before finding a full-time job.
"That might have to be pushed back another year," he says, "though I'm not sure how much longer I can push back getting a full-time job."
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