Is “back to normal” in sight as Pfizer and BioNTech thrill markets with vaccine trial results?

The Living Wage Foundation released its updated rates on the day of the announcement, but millions of workers struggle to get by on less. If “normal life” does resume in 2021 this is why it shouldn’t mean “business as usual”

Pfizer is one of the two companies that sparked a market surge with their vaccine trial results (REUTERS)

Live music, crowds at sports events, pubs, restaurants, cinemas. Life, in other words, as normal. Is it safe to start talking about that after the Pfizer and German company BioNTech dropped the remarkable news about their vaccine candidate? Well, perhaps.

“I’ve been following all these studies about vaccines and if they’re rolled out… Maybe a really safe time will be next April,” Marcus Davey, the boss of Camden’s famous Roundhouse, told me in August on the subject of live events.

It’s now possible to foresee that “if” as a “when”. Pfizer/BioNTech reported results that have far exceeded experts’s hopes for their vaccine candidate (one of several). Large-scale trails have shown it to be 90 per cent effective with no adverse effects. It’s just possible that Davey’s hopes will be realised. And it isn’t just Davey. Entire industries will now be biting their nails and awaiting further news.