Wall Street hawk Jim Cramer has no intention of taking a new coronavirus vaccine approved by Russian officials on Tuesday, which global health officials warn has yet to be proven safe and effective.
Speaking on the MSNBC show Squawk on the Street, Cramer called the vaccine, dubbed “Sputnik-V” by the Russians, “a tremendous leap of faith” before mocking it as “Chernobyl Two.”
“I’m gonna pass,” Cramer said, adding, “Hard pass, Chernobyl.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the approval of a vaccine on Tuesday morning, a first among all the countries in the world, and said that his daughter had taken it. But it has yet to go through late-stage clinical trials, which health experts say is needed to determine its effectiveness in preventing infections with statistical certainty.
“As far as I know, a vaccine against a new coronavirus infection has been registered this morning for the first time in the world,” Putin said. “Although I know that it works quite effectively, it forms a stable immunity and, I repeat, has passed all the necessary checks.”
Cramer questioned the methodology behind the vaccine trials and suggested that the stringent methods used in the United States to test potential vaccines were not being duplicated by the Russians.
“The Russians are — they have tremendous strength and very little fear, and it’s demonstrated in these trials they’re doing,” Cramer said, adding, “They used to have great science.”
Cramer dismissed early morning upward movement in the financial markets as an overreaction to the news.
“The market wants to believe, and those who don’t believe, David, are in the Nasdaq, and they will get hurt,” concluded Cramer.
