A comprehensive ability to anticipate and plan for future events distinguishes Homo sapiens from lower animals. But humans are flawed planners. Focusing on the near term has undoubtedly served humans well throughout evolutionary history, yet often leads to unintended consequences. Individuals eat the extra slice of pie with pleasure, but regret the indulgence when they stand on the scale. As small indiscretions accumulate over the years, they threaten health and well-being. Individual present-centeredness is mirrored in the larger society, which struggles with preparations for future needs and long-delayed risks. The maintenance of public infrastructure is a societal responsibility that is often deferred until it can no longer be ignored, as when a bridge collapses. Many are loath to bear the immediate costs of limiting carbon release into the atmosphere despite the growing awareness that eventually the failure to act will lead to environmental catastrophe. There are few rewards to legislators and government leaders who ask constituents to make sacrifices now to avert a future problem that seems as abstract and distant as it is potentially devastating.Preparations for infectious disease outbreaks, like public health measures more generally, are stymied by the disincentives to commit time, effort, and money to plans for distant and uncertain risks. Public health experts have long warned that the US is not adequately prepared for massive influenza pandemics, even though such outbreaks have occurred regularly in the past. 1 National and international agencies had flawed responses to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, including slow vaccine rollouts. 2 The confused and disorganized response to COVID-19 in much of the US and other nations around the world is especially disappointing because the pandemic emerged about 100 years after the great influenza pandemic of 1918, just when another massive influenza outbreak was expected. Less than 2 years before COVID-19 became known, Bill Gates had presciently warned that the next pandemic might not be caused by an influenza virus but rather by "an unknown pathogen that we see for the first time during an outbreak, as was the case with SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) [and] MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome)" 3 -both caused by coronaviruses similar to SARS-CoV-2.The missteps in responding to an outbreak that not only could be, but largely was, predicted should not give governments confidence that they are prepared for threats that are more speculative and possibly further in the future. Failure to anticipate the scale of the potential damage from such future catastrophes will only exacerbate the tendency to downplay their importance, making it less likely that governments will