Politics. “If you are going to tell me a lie, tell me a good lie,” was the frequent declaration of a bond salesman I know. People lie but out of sheer decency and respect one should try and at least make the story plausible, was, I believe, his point.
Telling stories – and please, let’s call it narrative – in politics is the coin of the realm. A master storyteller like President Franklin Roosevelt, through the kind intervention of the newfangled technology of radio, was able to transform himself from a privileged descendant of America’s first families to an everyman with a new deal.
Plausibility has faced its greatest test these last few years as, what Ben Hunt over at Epsilon Theory refers to as Fiat News, gets its comeuppance.
For the sake of geopolitics, Roosevelt’s infirmity was an open secret among the press corps but not the public at large. Alternative media has no such reservations and Americans can see very clearly the deteriorating health of President Joe Biden.
The plausibility of his presidency, not to mention a demanding race in 2024, is stretched beyond its limits. What that implausibility reveals is a certain lack of respect for the electorate, which has been deemed so stupid by the White House, that the storyline – only Biden can save us from a Trump resurgence – will be believed.
(Believability does not appear to extend to Governor Gavin Newsom or long-time Democrat, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)
Leaving the partisanship imbroglio aside, implausible tales, having garnered license from the highest levels of America’s government, proliferate. The Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug administration have spent their precious time fighting what they call “misinformation,” while producing poorly done studies on efficacy of Covid vaccines.
Meanwhile, the uptake of vaccines is falling woefully behind PFE’s guidance and sell side estimates, as the CDC indicated late last week.
It is reminder that when you tell a lie – err pardon me, “advance the narrative,” you better have at least a passing interest in plausibility. Otherwise, you are playing a short game, which, I admit, is something you might do if you aren’t going to stick around much longer.
Policy. Nearly every segment of the American economy appears to be weighing in on the effects of the GLP-1 class of drugs. If I understand other Hedgeye sector heads, Ozempic, Wegovy, et al can:
- Stop people from going to restaurants.
- Save airlines money through lower fuel costs.
- Reduce consumption of consumer staples like beer.
- Increase purchases of yoga outfits; and/or
- Liquidate the dialysis and the medtech industries.
- Regrow Brian McGough’s hair.
Meanwhile, UNH’s management explained to health care analysts, the price of the drug was simply too high. For the uninitiated, you can translate that to mean access will be limited and/or OptumRx wants a better incentive package before lettering the drug on its formularies.
In fact, what is being described as a massive uptake of GLP-1 drugs is not discernible in any macro data set like PCE.
We should probably conclude, and we sincerely hope you already have, that something else is going on here. Explaining away a weak stock price or trying to pump another one up are leading candidates. It is also possible that official acknowledgement of deteriorating financial conditions is being avoided, perhaps to keep the peace with the White House and its proxies.
It all begs the question, do all these management teams think we are stupid?
Power. If we are being charitable, we could make the argument that PFE’s Friday, 4:30pm guidance revision due to slow uptake of Covid-related products was a response to the CDC’s announcement of “7 million Americans” getting the shot earlier in the day.
We are, however, in no mood to be charitable.
There is no world in which PFE was going to commercialize and sell 82 million vaccines, their guidance in September. Update of the bivalent booster in the EU was nearly non-existent.
Even in the US, where the Food and Drug Administration has provided ample support for direct-to-consumer marketing and media criticism of bio-pharma is a no-go zone, less than 20% of Americans participated.
Misleading investors is one thing, but PFE also disclosed that scripts for Paxlovid are so poor, the U.S. Government is sending back 8M doses and in return, PFE gets to keep the $4.2B it was paid. The taxpayers get a little IOU for Paxlovid sometime in the future – or not. We may have forgotten all about it by then.
PFE is #BadforAmerica, something that has never been clearer. They least they could do is learn to tell good lies.
Have a great rest of your weekend.
Emily Evans
Managing Director – Health Policy
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