How do you feel about the idea of the WHO declaring a PHEIC over hantavirus? In part on the advice of people like yourself, the Sentinel Newsletter folks, Peter Wildeford, etc, I am trying to do the lord’s work by buying lots of No shares over at Kalshi, where (thanks in part to myself) the odds of a WHO hantavirus-PHEIC declaration have as of now been bid down to 8.5%. Is this still crazy-high, in your view? If I was fully, 100% confident that hantavirus was a guaranteed nothingburger, I’d be comfortable trying to bid it down further, to around 5%, which (again, in a world where I was totally confident this was zero-risk) would still give me annualized returns of around 10% when you toss in kalshi’s 3.25% interest payments.
I’d also be curious to hear your take on their “pandemic for any reason in 2026” market. I am assuming / hoping this refers to the WHO’s new “pandemic emergency” tier that’s a step above a normal PHEIC, but unfortunately it’s not totally clear from the rules. Even assuming this refers strictly to an official “pandemic emergency” declaration, it seems more likely than hantavirus-PHEIC to me. Would you agree?
I have far less confidence in whether the WHO will declare hantavirus a PHEIC vs. a pandemic, because I just don’t understand their criteria for the PHEIC designation. We all know what a pandemic is. A pandemic, to me, is clear “no,” yet is still at around 6.5 cents on Polymarket when I checked earlier today. A PHEIC is a much lower bar, that I can tell, and what seems crazy to me is that shares of “no hantavirus pandemic 2026“ on Polymarket is apparently only 2 cents more expensive than shares of “no hantavirus PHEIC 2026” on Kalshi. If I was forced to pick one of these markets to place bets in, I’d be buying shares of “no hantavirus pandemic 2026” on Polymarket, not “no hantavirus PHEIC 2026” on Kalshi, just because the bar for a pandemic is vastly higher than for a PHEIC and I’m very, very confident Andes virus will not clear that bar.
The ebola outbreak is clearly what I’d I’d consider intuitively a PHEIC. Is it a public health emergency? Yes! Is it of international concern? Yes! Heck, hantavirus on the Hondius is a public health emergency and it’s also of international concern. I think what’s implied by the term “PHEIC” when the WHO uses it is that not only is it an emergency, it’s not under control. And that’s what I think is the big differentiator: Andes virus has been more or less completely under control since it was finally admitted to be a problem. The ebola outbreak is in no way under control, even though it, like hantavirus, also has virtually zero chance of becoming a pandemic.
As far as how the new “pandemic emergency” tier collides with resolution criteria for “pandemic 2026″ prediction markets, I think this is a great illustration for why I think prediction markets are resulting in confusion, not clarity, in this domain. They require a ton of careful parsing of the resolution criteria, which might not be unambiguous and where even if they are at the start of the market, they might not be by the end. The whole “prediction markets are information aggregators” argument is one I have fundamental practical and theoretical disagreements with. One of those problems is that the prediction market price reflects two things. First, will the thing it’s about on its face, and that you’re trying to find out about, happen? Second, how well do the market participants understand the difference between the resolution criteria and what the market is, on its face, about, at any given time?
I personally am neither informed about nor interested in the details of how WHO bureaucracy will see fit to categorize the Hondius Andes virus outbreak. I do think their new category is a relevant, sensible one to include, so I’m glad to see they’re taking steps to give themselves a way to sound the alarm with appropriate volume before the horse is completely out of the barn and in a way that sidesteps quibbling. But I think that when prediction markets are motivating those most interested in them to nerd out about exactly how the WHO bureaucracy will operate, rather than the physical facts about what the future holds for us with regard to Andes virus deaths, the original purpose has clearly been lost. Setting aside concerns about predicton markets functoning as bounties for negative outcomes, what I’d prefer to see from an epistemic standpoint would be something like the number of global deaths or American deaths from Andes virus in 2026 or 2027. That would capture much more directly what we’re actually worried about with Andes virus. Similary, we could have a question like “which infectious diseases will cause at least 1 million deaths worldwide in 2026?”
But assuming the WHO “any pandemic 2026” market can be interpreted at face value, I’d say that no, I’m not sure that “any pandemic 2026″ is more likely than a hantavirus PHEIC, simply because I don’t necessarily know what WHO’s bar for declaring a PHEIC is. And in fact, since hantavirus can spread via aerosolized rat droppings and close human contact, it doesn’t seem impossible that we could see a not-going-to-be-a-pandemic, happens-to-be-at-a-national-border, limited, local, but genuine thing that we might intuitively categorize in layman’s terms as a “public health emergency of international concern around hantavirus,” whether or not the WHO bureaucracy saw fit to categorize it that way. I’m far less confident in the idea that Andes virus can’t even create highly localized, occasional, self-extinguishing outbreaks due to freak chance as I am that in its present form, it’s not a pandemic risk.
How do you feel about the idea of the WHO declaring a PHEIC over hantavirus? In part on the advice of people like yourself, the Sentinel Newsletter folks, Peter Wildeford, etc, I am trying to do the lord’s work by buying lots of No shares over at Kalshi, where (thanks in part to myself) the odds of a WHO hantavirus-PHEIC declaration have as of now been bid down to 8.5%. Is this still crazy-high, in your view? If I was fully, 100% confident that hantavirus was a guaranteed nothingburger, I’d be comfortable trying to bid it down further, to around 5%, which (again, in a world where I was totally confident this was zero-risk) would still give me annualized returns of around 10% when you toss in kalshi’s 3.25% interest payments.
I’d also be curious to hear your take on their “pandemic for any reason in 2026” market. I am assuming / hoping this refers to the WHO’s new “pandemic emergency” tier that’s a step above a normal PHEIC, but unfortunately it’s not totally clear from the rules. Even assuming this refers strictly to an official “pandemic emergency” declaration, it seems more likely than hantavirus-PHEIC to me. Would you agree?
I have far less confidence in whether the WHO will declare hantavirus a PHEIC vs. a pandemic, because I just don’t understand their criteria for the PHEIC designation. We all know what a pandemic is. A pandemic, to me, is clear “no,” yet is still at around 6.5 cents on Polymarket when I checked earlier today. A PHEIC is a much lower bar, that I can tell, and what seems crazy to me is that shares of “no hantavirus pandemic 2026“ on Polymarket is apparently only 2 cents more expensive than shares of “no hantavirus PHEIC 2026” on Kalshi. If I was forced to pick one of these markets to place bets in, I’d be buying shares of “no hantavirus pandemic 2026” on Polymarket, not “no hantavirus PHEIC 2026” on Kalshi, just because the bar for a pandemic is vastly higher than for a PHEIC and I’m very, very confident Andes virus will not clear that bar.
The ebola outbreak is clearly what I’d I’d consider intuitively a PHEIC. Is it a public health emergency? Yes! Is it of international concern? Yes! Heck, hantavirus on the Hondius is a public health emergency and it’s also of international concern. I think what’s implied by the term “PHEIC” when the WHO uses it is that not only is it an emergency, it’s not under control. And that’s what I think is the big differentiator: Andes virus has been more or less completely under control since it was finally admitted to be a problem. The ebola outbreak is in no way under control, even though it, like hantavirus, also has virtually zero chance of becoming a pandemic.
As far as how the new “pandemic emergency” tier collides with resolution criteria for “pandemic 2026″ prediction markets, I think this is a great illustration for why I think prediction markets are resulting in confusion, not clarity, in this domain. They require a ton of careful parsing of the resolution criteria, which might not be unambiguous and where even if they are at the start of the market, they might not be by the end. The whole “prediction markets are information aggregators” argument is one I have fundamental practical and theoretical disagreements with. One of those problems is that the prediction market price reflects two things. First, will the thing it’s about on its face, and that you’re trying to find out about, happen? Second, how well do the market participants understand the difference between the resolution criteria and what the market is, on its face, about, at any given time?
I personally am neither informed about nor interested in the details of how WHO bureaucracy will see fit to categorize the Hondius Andes virus outbreak. I do think their new category is a relevant, sensible one to include, so I’m glad to see they’re taking steps to give themselves a way to sound the alarm with appropriate volume before the horse is completely out of the barn and in a way that sidesteps quibbling. But I think that when prediction markets are motivating those most interested in them to nerd out about exactly how the WHO bureaucracy will operate, rather than the physical facts about what the future holds for us with regard to Andes virus deaths, the original purpose has clearly been lost. Setting aside concerns about predicton markets functoning as bounties for negative outcomes, what I’d prefer to see from an epistemic standpoint would be something like the number of global deaths or American deaths from Andes virus in 2026 or 2027. That would capture much more directly what we’re actually worried about with Andes virus. Similary, we could have a question like “which infectious diseases will cause at least 1 million deaths worldwide in 2026?”
But assuming the WHO “any pandemic 2026” market can be interpreted at face value, I’d say that no, I’m not sure that “any pandemic 2026″ is more likely than a hantavirus PHEIC, simply because I don’t necessarily know what WHO’s bar for declaring a PHEIC is. And in fact, since hantavirus can spread via aerosolized rat droppings and close human contact, it doesn’t seem impossible that we could see a not-going-to-be-a-pandemic, happens-to-be-at-a-national-border, limited, local, but genuine thing that we might intuitively categorize in layman’s terms as a “public health emergency of international concern around hantavirus,” whether or not the WHO bureaucracy saw fit to categorize it that way. I’m far less confident in the idea that Andes virus can’t even create highly localized, occasional, self-extinguishing outbreaks due to freak chance as I am that in its present form, it’s not a pandemic risk.