The Coronavirus has caused a lot of big changes in the lives of people globally and has made businesses do things once never contemplated. Two huge stories today are cases in point.

Stocks will spike today following Pfizer’s announcement that it has created a pill that reduces the need for hospitalisation and the threat of death from the virus in vulnerable people by 89%.

This led to US medical expert, Scott Gottlieb, telling TV viewers to CNBC that this could mean the “pandemic could be over”.

Clearly, Pfizer wouldn’t have produced this product if it wasn’t for the Coronavirus and its share price chart wouldn’t look like this.

Pfizer

That’s a 76% rise since March 2021 when the stock market hit its virus-created low.

And you could easily argue that Australian Super and its Aviation Alliance team, made up of IFM Investors and the Global Infrastructure Partners’ consortium, wouldn’t be buying Sydney Airport for $32 billion if it wasn’t for Covid-19.

That virus smashed Sydney Airport’s share price and restrained its price comeback as the world awaits the reopening of global travel. The business even suffered because local premiers decided to kill interstate flying by closing their borders, again because of the pandemic threat.

The virus also has forced central banks to depress interest rates worldwide and made super funds, which want a lot of their members’ funds to be invested safely, look for alternatives because secure bond interest rates are so low.

Monopolies such as Sydney Airport generally are great, secure income-payers, which is why super funds will be prowling the world for businesses like this in coming years.

If you need another permanent business change because of the virus, look at what the Americans are now calling the Great Resignation, which is a post-virus trend of employees in the US giving up their jobs!

On Saturday, in The Switzer Report, which is my subscriber newsletter for investors, I explained how the latest US jobs report had been affected by workers opting out of work!

“For numbers types, the October Jobs Report saw unemployment fall to 4.6% from 4.8% but the participation rate was the worry. ‘The most disappointing part of the report i.e. the number of people who joined the labor force, only rose by 104,000,’ wrote Market Watch’s Jeffry Bartash. ‘That left the rate of participation at a paltry 61.6%. The labor force participation rate has barely budged over the past year and remains near the lowest level since the early 1970s. The economy can’t grow much faster unless more people go back to work.

“And that’s despite the fact that businesses have raised the hourly rate by 4.9% over the past year, which is one of the biggest hikes for pay in decades!

Labour market experts tell us that the problem is that there is a lot of backfilling going on that undermines the quality of the job creation figures from an economic forecasting point of view. Backfilling happens when a firm takes on 10 new employees but four of those ‘new’ positions were to fill four resignations.

That’s why there are concerns about the Great Resignation trend that is just a new thorny issue investors have to deal with in the proverbial wall of worry, which the stock market always puts up.

Evan Sohn, CEO of Recruiter.com told CNBC that the resignations were more a lifestyle choice rather than a demand for better pay. This is going to be an important development for the economy and stock prices going forward.”

This trend is happening here and labour market experts think this will be the next industrial relations battleground, with employees wanting to work from home and live away from the city offices either permanently or at least a few days a week. On the other hand, bosses will want the productivity and profitability of their businesses to be an important consideration in this potential battle, which before the Coronavirus seemed like a pretty reasonable concern.

Meanwhile, today I expect stocks to have a great day with all those businesses hurt by the Coronavirus (i.e. retail, hospitality and tourism) bound to do well, as Pfizer’s magic new pill is set to make us believe that more normal times are closer.

Wall Street spiked when it realised the potential impact of Pfizer’s pill and it coincided with the better-than-expected October jobs number in the States. The Yanks expected 450,000 new jobs but saw 531,000 show up, but this is seen as a sign of a stronger-than-expected recovery of the economy following the Delta variant affecting the US job market in previous months. This improvement was a direct result of the success of vaccinations. Yep, it’s even a different world for economists like me. There are many who want me to guess our economic and stock market futures in a very different Coronavirus-affected world!

P.S. For those invested in Sydney Airport, if the board’s advice is accepted by the majority of shareholders, you will receive $8.75 a share in cash! This is the biggest cash takeover in Aussie history.