What if H5N1 bird flu starts spreading between humans?
Cleanest chain: a WHO H5N1 pandemic declaration + travel halts collapses mobility — crude and the jet/diesel complex crater while gold and duration bid on forced Fed easing. This is the COVID-Feb/Mar-2020 template (WTI fell ~70% into negative, gold rallied). Forward twist vs. 2020: an inflation-scarred Fed and an oil market with thinner spare capacity mean the crude drop could be sharp but the policy-easing bid for gold is the higher-conviction leg. Roots (pandemic 1.3, risk -1.1) are well-calibrated.
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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. Confirmed sustained human-to-human H5N1 avian-flu spread in three countries triggers WHO pandemic declaration and travel halts. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Pandemic shock ▲ · Recession signal ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.