If you haven’t heard about the bird flu (AKA avian flu/AKA H5N1), turn on the evening news sometime.

If you have heard about this threatening pandemic, how sure are you of it’s innevitable entrance into the U.S.? Do you think it will be confirmed in America by the end of the year? Before April, 2006?

Wanna bet?

Intrade is asking people to put their money where their mouths are. Intrade allows “investors” to place money on current events. Per their website:

Intrade.com is a person-to-person trading “Exchange”. It allows you to trade in the most innovative, transparent and fun way on political, financial, current and similar events. Intrade members trade directly with each other. When you trade on Intrade you are pitting your wits against other members of Intrade. Intrade provides the platform whereby members can trade between themselves.

The interesting part is that the end product is fairly accurate polling data. By requiring money to be placed before you can log your opinion, Intrade has given incentive for thoughtful and honest feedback.

Right now, those who believe the bird flu will be announced within the U.S. by the end of the year are selling at 32. This means those participating give a 32% chance that it will occur within the given timeframe. They give a
60% chance that it will occur by March 31, 2006.

The data within these polls has been amazingly accurate, so you might want to investigate information concerning the bird flu.

Or you can just laugh it off.