Abbott Laboratories and St. Jude Medical Inc. have kept analysts' busy this week, sifting through both companies' third quarter financials, looking for the read-through of Tuesday's $1.12 billion deal with Terumo Corp., trying to make heads or tails of Muddy Waters' latest cybersecurity attacks against St. Jude, all the while getting little clarity about the $5.8 billion elephant in the room otherwise known as Alere Inc.