Bet on this for 2007: there will be no outbreak of a newly mutated, extremely infectious and lethally virulent H5N1 bird flu. Millions will not die from H5N1. This strain of flu has been tracked for almost a decade. If it hasn't managed to mutate into a form that makes it easy for human-to-human transmission by now, odds are something else is going to take the glory: another flu variant or something like the SARS outbreak in 2003. Whatever it is, it will come out of nowhere.
No one can see the future. But there's no harm in some enlightened and educated guessing. TIME presents a thinking person's guide to the year to come.