Australia orders 6 years’ worth of vaccine boosters way ahead of the Omicron variant. Take profits on Pfizer today

In a demonstration of how independent Australia’s vaccine approval process is, the government purchased 80 million vaccine doses (4 shots person over 15) back in July before boosters were even approved. Why Australia even bothers staffing its Therapeutic Goods Administration beats me — all it needs is an intern with a rubber stamp.

And while 80 million would get Australia to the end of 2022, that’s clearly not the planned end of the pandemic. The country has placed contracts for a total of 280 million doses. That’s six years’ of two booster shots per annum, plus the original vaccination. How fortunate that the government got these orders in before the Nu/Xi/Omicron mutation was declared a variant of concern.

By our reckoning, that should get us through to 2027 — in time for the next pandemic.

Recall that the last pandemic was the 2009 H1N1 flu. Back then, the WHO had already moved the goal posts to declare this benign virus a pandemic, but hadn’t worked out that they need to change the accounting rules for pandemic deaths. Back then, people who died in road accidents with H1N1 weren’t counted toward the pandemic death toll, so the entire thing was a fizzer.

The H1N1 vaccines were hurried out — ineffective and with awful side effects — but with no coordinated panic amongst the mainstream media and government leadership, vaccine mandates never got close to implementation.

By the time Australia was ready to take delivery of its 21 million vaccine shots, nobody needed them. The US halved its orders and most ended up in storage as the brief panic simply ran out of steam and nobody really cared.

This time really is different. Every country’s government is supporting the vaccine rollout (now that the few anti-vax leaders have died) and its a race to buy as much Pfizer as possible.

The Australian government spend as of July was already A$9 billion. It’s not clear how much of that was vaccine and how much delivery. But we can be pretty confident that the next 200 million shots will be similarly priced and be a chunk of change for Pfizer (and some Moderna).

This Omicron strain which we predicted back in January is serving to keep the masses panicking and governments dutifully cancelled flights from affected countries because, you know, it’s been proven effective.

This means ongoing purchases of vaccines ad nauseum. This is great of our calls on PFE and MDN.

Take up to 200% profits on Pfizer and Moderna

If you purchased the Pfizer 30/35 vertical call spread back in January, it’s now worth $4.90 for a 58% profit. I suggest you close it out. Similarly, the Moderna January 100/120 call spread is now worth 19.90 for an 81% profit. Not too shabby for 10 months.

Better, though, are your straight calls on Pfizer. Three weeks ago on November 9 I recommended buying the Pfizer June 65 calls which we opened for 0.62 the next day.

As expected, these more than tripled in price since then. We expected these profits and we knew it was time for another variant of concern to be announced. However, the rapid spike in price may not last when the world realizes this is even less dangerous than the delta variant.

Therefore, I recommend taking some money off the table.

Specifically, SELL TO CLOSE half of your June 65 call options at a limit of 2.07 ($207 per contract, or $5,017 for a recommended 25-contract position) and make it good for the day.

This will net you a juicy 239% profit, which means you’ve taken your capital and more off the table and are just running profits.

Cheers,

P.

Update: These options didn’t hit our sell target of 2.07 on Friday, closing at the day’s high of 1.94. Place the trade into the market again on Monday and make it good for the week.

17 December

Update: 239% profits taken. Pfizer jumped yesterday and the options closed at 4.04. Assuming you kept your trade in the market, you made 239% on the half you had in the market. Well done.