Vaccine police meme via Reddit.

President Biden Announces Vaccine Mandate

In my original Corona Doom 2.0 post, I wrote that it seemed likely that the federal and state governments in the U.S. would use the threat of lockdowns to pressure unvaccinated people to get vaccinated. It turns out the feds decided to take a more direct approach. Heidi Przbyia's thread below details the full Biden plan, but the big item is #1: requiring all employers with 100+ employees to ensure that they're workers are vaccinated or tested for COVID weekly. 

According to the AP, the vaccine mandate could affect up to 100 million Americans. 

A Curious Exception

One exception to Biden's vaccine mandate is the U.S. Postal Service. 

Some conservative pundits have suggested that the arbitrary nature of this exemption may give ammo to opponents of vaccine mandates in court. 

A Note About Vaccines And Mandates

Before we go further here, I should note that while I am personally against COVID vaccine mandates due to the low risk of the disease for most people and the experimental nature of the mRNA vaccines, I am fully vaccinated [Pfizer (PFE) /BioNTech (BNTX) version]. And I agree with Ann Coulter's suggestion below: if you are over 40 or overweight (or have other risk factors), you should get vaccinated. 

Vaccine Mandate Plus Declining Efficacy 

As I pointed out in a previous post (Corona Doom 2.0: Booster Shots), the vaccine makers were benefiting from an unexpected decline in the efficacy of their vaccines, prompting the need for booster shots. Instead of a one-time, or two-time thing, COVID vaccines are becoming more like a flu shot, which people are advised to get every year. In fact, Moderna (MRNA) is working on a combined COVID booster/flu shot. 

So the booster shots were one tailwind for the vaccine makers, and now the vaccine mandate will be another (even if the mandate is overturned in court, undoubtedly millions more will have been compelled to get vaccinated by then, on pain of losing their jobs). 

Vaccine Maker Among Our Top Names Again

As a reminder, our system gauges stock and options market sentiment each trading day and uses that to rank the thousands of securities in our universe by their potential returns over the next six months. Our top name on Thursday was the vaccine maker Moderna. This wasn't the first time a COVID vaccine maker appeared in our top ten. BioNTech hit our top names on May 13th. Since then, it was up 94.36% as of Thursday's close. 

Moderna itself has appeared in our top ten before as well, on August 12th. Since then, it was up 16.48% as of Thursday's close. 

It looks like Moderna may have more room to run. As always, I suggest readers look to limit their downside risk if they decide to buy it. You can use our website or the Portfolio Armor iPhone app to scan for cost-effective hedges on Moderna.