What if an unknown 'Disease X' respiratory pathogen overwhelms hospitals?
Cleanest chain: a no-diagnostic 'Disease X' respiratory pathogen across two continents is the maximal mobility shock — crude and refined products crater, gold and Treasuries rip on an emergency-easing bid. This is the COVID-Mar-2020 crash, dialed up by the absence of any test or vaccine head-start. Highest-conviction leg is long gold/duration over short crude (oil can overshoot then mean-revert on supply cuts). Roots (pandemic 1.4, recession 0.9) are aptly the most severe in the set.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Unidentified high-transmissibility respiratory pathogen overwhelms hospitals across two continents before any diagnostic exists. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Pandemic shock ▲ · Recession signal ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.