It's inevitable that we will get another pandemic. COVID, as it turned out in hindsight, wasn't as bad as it could have been. As I recall, it had about a 4% mortality. The deniers will say "see, I told you!", but they had no way to know. They were just following misinformation and ideology. As it is, I've seen estimates of up to 1M people dying needlessly because they listened to the misinformation, including that from the Felon.

Spanish Flu had a mortality of about 20%, give or take. One in five who contracted it, died. Some form of flu is the most likely pandemic candidate, and it is inevitable. If we don't have the resources and protocols in place to handle it, literally hundreds of millions could die. We have at least 4x the global population that existed during Spanish Flu, and that killed ~100M people. So, next time we could be looking at half a billion or more.

Frankly, it will serve us right when it happens. We listen to demagogues and liars who have no clue, instead of the experts that actually know. And then we don't take the necessary steps to minimize the catastrophe. Could happen next year, or in ten years, or in fifty years. Dunno. But it will happen. We need to get our act together before it does.