Introduction

H5N1 is a looming threat, making regular headlines. The CDC has identified 66 U.S. human cases as of January 4, 2024. Scott Alexander has a recent post outlining the situation.

There are several FDA-approved prescription antiviral flu drugs. The newest, using a novel mechanism of action called "cap-snatching," is baloxavir marboxil (BXM, brand name Xofluza). It is on-patent and substantially more expensive than oseltamivir (OST, brand name Tamiflu, now available as a generic).

I built a Guesstimate model to model the impact of using Xofluza at various stages of illness. A few facts about it:.

It is primarily based on data from the largest-to-date published clinical trials for BXM, as well as CDC flu modeling and some other flu-related academic literature.
In Guesstimate, users can simulate different flu and patient characteristics, substituting their assumptions for mine.
It models two flu types: normal-risk and higher-risk. Normal-risk flu is [...]