The World Health Organization (WHO) will declare H5N1 a pandemic in 2025 (25 percent) — CORRECT CALL
I’ve been covering the H5N1 bird flu virus since the spring of 2003 in Hong Kong, when there was some suspicion that the unknown illness spreading in southern China at the time might be bird flu finally transmitting human to human. It wasn’t — it was something entirely new called SARS-CoV-1, though back in those pre-Covid days we didn’t have the “1.”
Every January since, I’ve been wondering if this is the year we finally get our dreaded bird flu pandemic. And every year, including 2025, it hasn’t been.
Instead, we got a year that underlined the basic tension of H5N1: It keeps looking terrifying on paper, while acting more like a slow-burn animal disaster than a human pandemic. H5 bird flu is now entrenched in wild birds, poultry, and US dairy cattle. The US experienced its first US H5N1 death early in the year and nearly 70 US infections since April 2024, mostly among workers around infected herds and flocks.
On the animal side, the picture is much worse. A major Nature perspective described a true H5N1 “panzootic” across bird and mammal species, including mink, marine mammals, and cattle, with clear evidence of mammal-to-mammal spread in some settings and worrying adaptive mutations. What we’re seeing adds up to an unprecedented number of mammalian infections, severe neurological disease in animals, and growing uncertainty about how close this virus is to efficient human transmission.
There is some good news on preparedness. Health agencies still classify the overall public health risk from current H5 viruses as low, and vaccine work is accelerating. In December, Moderna and CEPI announced funding for a late-stage trial of an mRNA bird flu vaccine.
So, once again, no H5N1 bird flu pandemic in humans. After 22 years of covering this virus I’m tempted to just say that pandemic will never happen, but I’m not quite that foolhardy. When it comes to H5N1, we’ve been more lucky than we’ve been good. —Bryan Walsh
There will be a ceasefire in Ukraine (75 percent) — INCORRECT CALL
When I made this call, I thought the logic was straightforward. The war was grinding into its third year, both sides had taken appalling losses, and Donald Trump was about to take office with little interest in writing Ukraine a blank check. It seemed reasonable that Moscow and Kyiv would fight hard for marginal gains in early 2025, then accept a ceasefire that froze the lines.
That is not the world we’re in. As 2025 ends, the conflict in Ukraine remains the largest war in Europe since World War II, with well over a million people killed or wounded and Russia still occupying roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory. There have been brief truces — measured in dozens of hours or a few days at most — but nothing that qualifies as the “durable pause in the fighting” I had in mind.
Instead, we have diplomacy without peace. The Trump administration is pushing a plan that would freeze the front lines and lift some sanctions; Russian and American officials are shuttling between European capitals and Miami hotel conference rooms; and Ukraine, Europe, and the US have reportedly agreed on most of a peace framework. The sticking point is exactly what you’d expect: territory and legitimacy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy still refuses to recognize Russia’s land grab in the east and south, while Putin insists that any ceasefire ratify his conquests.
In retrospect, I overweighted “war-weariness” and underweighted how much the key actors care about not losing. I implicitly assumed a Korean War-style ending: a bloody stalemate capped by an ugly armistice. What we actually got was the stalemate without the armistice, and one that is set to continue into the new year. —BW
California’s animal agriculture law Proposition 12 will not be overturned by Congress (65 percent) — CORRECT CALL
I should, if anything, have predicted this with higher probability. The only somewhat surprising part is that Congress still hasn’t passed a new Farm Bill to replace the one that expired more than two years ago, which is really behind schedule even by today’s chronically late legislative standards. (The coalition that made the last century of farm bills possible is breaking down, as Republicans demand steep cuts to SNAP and an end to “climate-smart” provisions in ag funding.)
In theory, that still gives them the chance to kill Prop 12 in the Farm Bill that eventually passes, but the longer that the animal welfare law remains in place, the less likely the pork industry is to continue campaigning against it, and the less likely it is to be nullified — and thank God for that. —Marina Bolotnikova, deputy editor
Read the rest of our revisited predictions here.
