Why this prediction is classified as inconclusive

• The prediction window is “in 20 years” from 2020—i.e., by around 2040. As of today (late 2025), only about 5 years have elapsed since the prediction, leaving roughly 15 years in the forecast horizon. The claim is about what could happen by 2040, so it cannot yet be definitively judged right or wrong.

• Empirically, humanity is far from eradicating all infectious diseases as of 2025. Smallpox remains the only human infectious disease that has been eradicated globally. WHO and related summaries describe smallpox as the only human disease ever eradicated, certified in 1980 after the last natural case in 1977. (who.int) Many other major infectious diseases (e.g., malaria, TB, HIV, a wide spectrum of respiratory and enteric infections) persist at large scale.

• Even for polio, a single human infectious disease with a long-running, well-funded eradication campaign, eradication has not yet been completed. As of 2022–2023, wild poliovirus type 1 remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and outbreaks of vaccine-derived polioviruses continue in multiple countries. (asm.org) This illustrates how challenging eradication is, even for one pathogen with effective vaccines and decades of effort.

• The trajectory of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is moving in the opposite direction of global eradication: a 2025 WHO report shows that in 2023, about one in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections worldwide was resistant to antibiotics, with resistance rising in over 40% of pathogen–antibiotic combinations between 2018 and 2023. (who.int) AMR is projected to cause millions of deaths and major economic damage by 2050 without strong intervention, which makes the idea of eradicating all infectious disease even more technically and logistically daunting. (ft.com)

• Scientifically, most global health and infectious-disease experts consider the complete eradication of all infectious diseases (including those with animal or environmental reservoirs, rapidly mutating viruses, and increasingly drug-resistant bacteria) extremely unlikely in any 20‑year window. However, the prediction is phrased in a counterfactual/possibilistic way (“we could… the only thing holding that up is regulation”), which makes it harder to falsify outright: it depends on assumptions about future political, regulatory, and funding choices as much as on biology.

Given that:

1. The deadline (circa 2040) has not yet arrived, so the prediction’s outcome is not yet observable, and
2. The statement is partly about what could be possible under different regulatory conditions rather than a hard, time‑stamped forecast of what will happen,

the fairest classification at this point is “inconclusive (too early)”.

Substantively, based on current evidence on AMR trends, remaining eradication challenges even for a single disease like polio, and the enormous ongoing burden of infectious diseases worldwide, the prediction looks highly implausible—but it cannot yet be declared definitively wrong under the 2040 timeline.