A few thoughts on the Pfizer BioNTech news today that the vaccine candidate for SARS-CoV-2 appears to be over 90% effective.

First, this is great news. >90% efficacy is really high, governments were willing to accept quite a bit lower given the circumstances.

But, also, the news was kind of expected. We'll end up with multiple, maybe many, SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

Second, it seems odd to price this into the stock market. The world has to make it through the winter and surging, record case loads. The worst of the pandemic could easily be ahead of us in the next few months. That'd be terrible for the economy.

Third, investors are all going to learn a lesson about drug development with these vaccines.

FDA approval (which hasn't happened yet) doesn't provide finality. FDA approval is the end of drug development, but only the beginning of commercial activities.

There are many logistical hurdles for commercial activities. Vaccines must be manufactured, shipped (using the cold chain = very cold temperatures), and administered. These mRNA vaccines, including from Pfizer-BioNTech, require two doses 28 days apart.

Pfizer expects to manufacture 100 million doses before the end of 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.

But each individual requires two doses. So that's only 50 million people in 2020 and 650 million people in 2021.

That's unlikely to include children, because we haven't tested these vaccines in children. We'll need additional studies for that, meaning a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for children might not be available until late 2021.

Also, rumor has it, the United States isn't the only country on the planet. These vaccines will be distributed globally and, at least at first, there's likely to be international "rationing" of sorts as many countries receive doses to give to their citizens.

The reality is life isn't going to return to 2019 levels of fun until perhaps 2022. Keep all of this mind.

A good chunk of the @7investing team will be discussing this at the top of the hour on our live show, 7investing Now: https://twitter.com/7investing/status/1325826370828718080