Abbott Labs CEO, Affirm CEO, Roblox CEO & J2 Global CEO

**Jim Cramer** (0:01)
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**Jim Cramer** (0:04)
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**Jim Cramer** (0:12)
Mad Money starts now.

**Jim Cramer** (0:17)
Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Cramer. I'll be one of my friends. I'm just trying to make some money. My job is not just to entertain, but to teach, put it in context, educate.
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You know what we want? We want a normal stock market that trades on traditional metrics. How about earnings? How about the sales? How's the sector? What happens if the Fed raises rates? Who knows? But even on a crazy day like today, where tech let us down before rebounding, while the rest of the market stayed down, the Dow sinking 474 points, S&P losing 0.87%, and NASDAQ finished the session off just 0.09%. Nice recovery there from the lows. We keep acting like this is a usual time. This is anything but usual. I mean, think about it. We're living in the shadow of a pandemic. Only about 35% of the country's been fully vaccinated. We celebrate the fact that fewer than 40,000 people caught COVID in America yesterday. That's still really bad.
If we had seen a number like that during the first wave of infections, we'd still be in lockdown. When we saw numbers like that at the end of September, we were in panic mode. The truth is we just got used to the pandemic. And of course, there are far fewer deaths because there's more ways to treat the virus. Plus, we've got the hope of herd immunity as more people get the vaccine.
But COVID is still very much with us. Meanwhile, our efforts to combat COVID and get the economy worrying again have created some incredibly unusual circumstances. We still have what might be some to be considered overly generous unemployment benefits that make it hard for businesses to find workers. We have to pay $22 an hour at my restaurant to match what unemployment benefits can give you. And we can't afford it. We just have to close. People apply for work as they're supposed to, but then they don't even show for their employment. Why not? It's hard for businesses to adjust to a world where the workers can just do fine without a paycheck. We've got eviction freezes, hundreds of thousands of businesses have closed. We still don't know what the protocol is for anything. Master no mask, test or no test, cruise or no cruise. Will people be compelled to take a vaccine? Will they pass taking a vaccine? Do we have to take a vaccine? I don't know, who knows? Do you know? So it's possible that many of the national numbers like the Labor Department's non-farm payroll report last Friday could be completely distorted. Plus the reopening trade that everyone loves is all about the expectation that the vaccines will stay positive, working, fighting against COVID and that the COVID variants are crushed.
And we can actually go somewhere, anywhere that's actually open. When we have a situation that is confusing as this one, I like to turn away from the government data and go directly to the business people I trust who've done so much to stem this pandemic. People like Robert Ford, the CEO of Abbott Labs. This is the company that pioneered antigen testing for COVID. They make all sorts of proprietary devices for diabetes, the heart, the brain, among so many other organs. Abbott can help us make sense of the moment so that we can develop a worldview that puts things in perspective. I spoke to Robert Ford at CNBC's Healthy Returns event earlier.
Take a look.
I happen to have, in front of me, Binax Now to test.
I've used it. Why have I used it? Because I went out of the country and I wanted you to know that I was okay.
I want to know, Robert, as we get more and more vaccinated, will we be using Binax Now less or is it going to be a fact of our life no matter what and we're going to find it in World Region CVS and stockpile?

**Robert Ford** (3:38)
Well, listen, from the beginning, as you know, we went all in. And we went all in, Jim, because we knew that, you know, we had a responsibility to develop the, you know, using our diagnostic leadership to develop the tests, not only for pandemic phase, but also for vaccine phase.
You know, if we're going to rely solely on vaccine, which I think we've done an amazing job from the development to the rollout, but if we rely solely on it, there are, you know, it's not as complete as you would like, you know, whether it's the penetration rate of vaccines. We know that some states have higher rates than others.