What if a universal flu vaccine clears its final trial?
A universal flu vaccine is a pharma franchise-reshuffle story (winners vs Sanofi/GSK/CSL flu books), not a broad robotics-productivity bid; the GPU/Tesla cascade is mis-mapped. Closest analogue is the GLP-1 obesity re-rating of 2023, which lifted the innovator and crushed legacy-franchise incumbents rather than the Nasdaq. Forward angle: payers capture most savings, so the equity move is concentrated, not index-level.
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 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. 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 mixed shock. mRNA universal influenza vaccine clears phase 3, threatening the annual flu-shot franchise and reshaping seasonal-vaccine revenue. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Risk appetite ▲ — 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 |
|---|
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +6bp · 5d +3bp | 65% | 40 | 0.23 | · |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d -0.1% | 62% | 40 | 0.18 | · |
| Volatility VIX | SHORT | -2.0% · 5d -6.8% | 60% | 40 | 0.15 | · |
| Bitcoin BTC | LONG | +6.3% · 5d -1.9% ↺ fades | 56% | 36 | 0.10 | · |
| Gold XAU | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d -0.8% | 55% | 40 | 0.08 | · |
| US dollar DXY | LONG | +0.1% · 5d -0.0% ↺ fades | 45% | 40 | 0.00 | · |
Why this probability
Universal flu vaccine clearing phase 3 in 1-3y is rare; no candidate is that far along. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.