Bird flu continues rapidly to infect the world’s media, if not yet its population, spawning feverish headlines about the human and monetary costs of a potential pandemic and somewhat more absurd stories of how happiness or Sauerkraut could guard against the illness.

But signs of the seriousness of the threat are evident in capital markets, where there is growing interest in the potential for reinsurers to pass on to investors – in the form of so-called catastrophe bonds – the costs associated with a sudden rise in deaths.