[1] https://ourworldindata.org/spanish-flu-largest-influenza-pan...
> Other large influenza pandemics
> The Spanish flu pandemic was the largest, but not the only large recent influenza pandemic. Two decades before the Spanish flu the Russian flu pandemic (1889-1894) is believed to have killed 1 million people.
> Estimates for the death toll of the “Asian Flu” (1957-1958) vary between 1.5 and 4 million. Gatherer (2009) published the estimate of 1.5 million, while Michaelis et al. (2009) published an estimate of 2–4 million.
> According to a WHO publication the “Hong Kong Flu” (1968-1969) killed between 1 and 4 million people.
> Michaelis et al. (2009) published a lower estimate of 1–2 million.
> The Russian Flu pandemic of 1977-78 was caused by the same H1N1 virus that caused the Spanish flu. According to Michaelis et al. (2009) around 700,000 died worldwide.
> What becomes clear from this overview are two things: influenza pandemics are not rare[...]
Heck, ebola was a decade ago with 300k deaths. Novel viruses appear all the time.
The other side of the problem is that lawmakers have no incentive to set aside money/time/resources for pandemic preparedness.
A quote from HHS Secretary under Bush, Mark Leavitt sums up part of the problem nicely:
> “In advance of a pandemic, anything you say sounds alarmist. After a pandemic starts, everything you’ve done is inadequate.”
Another example of lawmakers having no incentive to think about the future:
>The Public Health Emergency Preparedness program’s funding has gone from about a billion dollars in 2003 to $675 million this year, while the Hospital Preparedness program has gone from more than $500 million at its peak in 2004 to less than $300 million today.
Fairly frequently.
> So far it's once-in-a-lifetime (or less)...
No, it's not, even if you restrict yourself to novel betacoronaviruses that become significant human public health concerns (e.g., SARS, MERS, SARS-CoV-2).