The University of Iowa will soon be opening and operating a "pandemic flu futures market " online (St Petersbugh Times)

Organizers hope to recruit at least 100 epidemiologists, veterinarians and other medical experts from around the world for the two-year project. They will be asked to join an online trading system akin to agricultural futures markets, in which investors buy contracts that businesses will be able to deliver certain volumes of, say, corn or pork bellies.

But in this project, the contracts represent not the likelihood of a good corn harvest but the odds that deadly bird flu will infect a human in Hong Kong by July 1.

"Yes" contracts on that prediction are currently trading at 43 cents. That means the experts think there's a 43 percent chance of that occurring. (Via FluLab)

What? A 43 percent chance that a human will simply contract H5N1 by summer? Jesus, there are human outbreaks from Niger to Egypt to Laos right now.


Buy, BUY!