What if a mammal-adapted H5N1 strain hits US dairy herds?
A mammal-adapted, more-transmissible H5N1 is the genuine pandemic tail — IF it gains human spread, the crude-down/gold-up/Fed-easing risk-off cascade is directionally right; on dairy alone it's mainly a milk-price and import-ban story. Rhymes with the Feb-2020 COVID demand-shock template the analogues cite (circuit breakers, gold bid). Transmission: a true human-transmission event hits global mobility, EM FX, and risk broadly. Forward: this is the one agri scenario where the macro-risk-off mapping is justified — but only conditional on human spread, which is not yet evidenced.
how we built this number — every step
The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.
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 (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the 6–18 months 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. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A more transmissible, mammal-adapted H5N1 variant tears through US dairy herds, collapsing milk output and triggering fresh foreign import bans. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Pandemic shock ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.
If it happens — the markets it would move
Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WTI crude CLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▼ -4.0% hist -10.89–+0.0% · other way +3.31% (n=12) |
| 2 | Gold XAUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +2.9% hist +0.46–+2.68% · other way +0.97% (n=12) |
| 3 | Energy sector XLEon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.8% hist -6.18–-0.17% · other way -0.51% (n=12) |
| 4 | United Airlines UAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +2.4% hist -0.38–+1.72% · other way +0.75% (n=12) |
| 5 | ExxonMobil XOM 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.0% hist -4.72–+0.35% · other way +0.14% (n=12) |
| 6 | Chevron CVX 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.8% hist -5.06–+0.16% · other way +0.3% (n=12) |
| 7 | Delta DAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +2.0% hist -1.52–+1.87% · other way +0.7% (n=12) |
| 8 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +1.0% hist -0.1–+1.6% · other way +0.15% (n=12) |
| 9 | 30y Treasury yield DGS30 📈 chart | Rate | ▼ -12bp hist -10.08–-2.54% · other way +7.4% (n=12) |
| 10 | 10y Treasury yield DGS10 📈 chart | Rate | ▼ -10bp hist -11.83–-0.93% · other way +8.4% (n=12) |
| 11 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▲ +0.8% hist -0.12–+1.33% · other way +0.13% (n=12) |
| 12 | US dollar (DXY) DXYon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.7% hist -0.84–-0.06% · other way +0.16% (n=12) |
| 13 | USD/JPY USDJPYon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.8% hist -1.01–-0.02% · other way +0.72% (n=12) |
| 14 | 2y Treasury yield DGS2 | Rate | ▼ -8bp model prior · unmeasured |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade long on UAL/DAL/XHB: history's -14% is entirely the March-2020 COVID crash cluster — that's a generic everything-down regime, not the airline-specific demand hit from mammal-adapted H5N1.
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 40 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.
| Asset | History says | Abnormal (20d · 5d) | Hit | n | Confidence | vs cascade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XLE XLE | SHORT | -4.2% · 5d -2.0% | 79% | 40 | 0.56 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CL CL | SHORT | -7.6% · 5d -3.1% | 79% | 40 | 0.50 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CVX CVX | SHORT | -3.6% · 5d -2.1% | 74% | 40 | 0.48 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XOM XOM | SHORT | -3.4% · 5d -1.9% | 68% | 40 | 0.35 | ✓ matches cascade |
| EURUSD EURUSD | LONG | +0.6% · 5d +0.1% | 68% | 40 | 0.32 | ✓ matches cascade |
| US dollar DXY | SHORT | -0.5% · 5d -0.1% | 64% | 40 | 0.25 | ✓ matches cascade |
| KRW KRW | LONG | +0.7% · 5d +0.2% | 64% | 40 | 0.25 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XHB XHB | SHORT | -1.6% · 5d -0.4% | 62% | 40 | 0.20 | ⚠ differs |
| ARM ARM | SHORT | -4.1% · 5d -5.4% | 64% | 22 | 0.19 | ⚠ differs |
| GBPUSD GBPUSD | LONG | +0.5% · 5d -0.3% ↺ fades | 62% | 40 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AUD AUD | LONG | +0.4% · 5d -0.0% ↺ fades | 62% | 40 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -3.4% · 5d -3.6% | 62% | 40 | 0.18 | ⚠ differs |
| Gold XAU | LONG | +1.1% · 5d +0.2% | 60% | 40 | 0.16 | ✓ matches cascade |
| TRY TRY | SHORT | -1.3% · 5d +0.2% ↺ fades | 57% | 40 | 0.11 | ⚠ differs |
Why this probability
Mammal-adapted transmissible H5N1 is a rare tail event; dairy spillover ongoing but no efficient mammal adaptation yet. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.