Okay so I’ve been down a rabbit hole for a few days and I need to share this with people who won’t think I’m insane.
There’s a hantavirus outbreak that started on a cruise ship in Argentina last month. Few confirmed cases, few deaths, WHO quietly acknowledging human to human transmission is possible.
Here’s the bit that got me. Andes virus kills somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of the people it infects. Covid was killing 1 to 2 percent and we locked down the entire planet. Let that sink in.
The ship had passengers from over 20 nationalities. One symptomatic case flew through Johannesburg before anyone knew what was happening. Johannesburg. One of the busiest flight hubs on earth. Incubation is up to a month. These people are home now. Asymptomatic. Going to work. Taking the tube.
So I built a pie (on trading212) called Buy the Outbreak. Based entirely on what actually moved during Covid and how long it took to peak from the date WHO was first notified of Wuhan. One PPE stock went nearly 10x in under two months. Diagnostics followed. Vaccine platforms took over a year but had the biggest overall runs.
I’m not betting on a pandemic. I’m betting on the market pricing in the fear of one.
The trigger for real money going in is one confirmed case with zero connection to the ship or known contacts. Community transmission confirmed. When that drops I’ll drop a lot more into this.
The bit where I might be chasing geese
Saw a Reddit AMA today from some guy currently in a Canadian hospital with hantavirus. Went to Argentina, stayed in a sketchy cabin with mice everywhere, classic rodent exposure story. Doctors are probably right that’s how he got it.
But here’s the thing. If H2H transmission was already quietly moving through rural southern Argentina before the cruise ship nobody would have noticed. Every case gets chalked up to rodent exposure because that’s the default diagnosis. Always has been.
I’m not saying this Canadian guy is the signal. I’m saying if his strain ever gets genomically sequenced and matches the cruise ship variant we are in very different territory. I’m watching. Probably nothing. Possibly not nothing.
High mortality but this isn’t Covid. Andes needs sustained close contact to spread efficiently, it’s not floating around in the air of a Wetherspoons. This could be completely contained next week and I’ll have lost the price of a night in the pub on the pre position.
But the asymmetry is interesting enough that I couldn’t not be in before the trigger.
Not a doctor. Not a financial advisor. Just a degenerate who saw a 35 percent mortality rate on Twitter at 1am and couldn’t sleep.
DYOR. Don’t put your rent in. But here’s the pie if you want to follow along.
Position: In since open today. Super small pre trigger position, adding heavy on confirmation. Will post the weightings in a comment below.