TL;DR
Many biosecurity interventions assume that if we develop effective countermeasures against engineered pandemics, societies will be able to deploy them when needed. However, this assumption is largely based on conditions found in high-income countries: strong institutions, public trust, reliable healthcare systems, robust surveillance networks, and adequate funding. In this piece, I argued that defence models developed and expected to work in Western countries may not work everywhere, especially in resource-limited settings. The environment where the intervention will be deployed is equally essential and should be factored in during development.
I propose that every intervention pass the Biosecurity Environmental Fit (BEF) test to determine the degree to which a biosecurity intervention is compatible with the institutional, infrastructural, economic, and sociocultural environment in which it is deployed
Background
It is no longer news that with an increase in AI system capabilities comes the heightened threat of misalignment that might come with it. In Andrew Snyder-Beattie's article, over 99% of existential threats to man will arise from engineered pathogens, compared with the less than 1% that might arise from natural sources. The article noted that the space for possible human attack is infinite, while the possible portals of entry into humans are finite; hence the need to increase research to develop low-cost interventions that can be deployed more widely to build robust defences. I agree with the principle. However, reading the article from Nigeria with an understanding of the socio-cultural dimensions raises a question that I rarely see discussed in biosecurity circles:
Why do we assume that defence models developed and expected to work in Western countries will work everywhere?
The Engineered Pandemic Playbook May Fail in Nigeria
In management theory, Michael Porter's Diamond Model explains why some nations become highly competitive in particular industries. His central insight is that success does not emerge from a strategy alone. It emerges from the interaction between a strategy and the environment in which it is deployed. A model that works in one country may fail in another because the underlying conditions are different. I think biosecurity may face a similar problem.
Many proposed interventions against engineered pandemics assume the existence of conditions commonly found in high-income countries:
High trust in public institutions.
Strong disease surveillance systems.
Near-universal access to healthcare.
Reliable diagnostic infrastructure.
Effective risk communication.
High compliance with public-health guidance.
Well-resourced regulatory agencies.
Comprehensive digital and laboratory reporting systems.
Funding to implement policies and interventions
These assumptions are often invisible because they are built into the environments where many biosecurity researchers live and work. Nigeria presents a different operating environment.
An engineered pandemic would not interact with Nigeria's formal health system alone. It would interact with Nigeria's transportation networks, markets, religious institutions, informal healthcare providers, social norms, governance structures, and economic realities. Healthcare is fragmented across public, private, informal, and traditional providers.
In Nigeria, disease surveillance coverage is uneven. Approximately 80% of healthcare facilities in Nigeria are concentrated in urban areas, leaving rural communities with severely limited and disproportionate access. While many rural areas may physically possess a Primary Health Care (PHC) centre, it is estimated that only about 20% of these facilities are actually functional, equipped, and staffed to provide adequate care. Therefore, an intervention should plan how to factor in these rural dwellers. Cross-border movement is extensive.
Much of biosecurity thinking is built around a reasonable assumption: if we develop the right interventions, societies will be able to deploy them when a catastrophic biological event occurs. What if the problem is the environment in which the intervention is expected to work?
Some factors that might affect these interventions from working
1. The Infrastructure Problem
In biosecurity, skills, infrastructure, institutions, and resources necessary for success include diagnostic capacity, genomic sequencing, disease surveillance, laboratory networks, emergency response systems, logistics, and healthcare infrastructure. While Nigeria has world-class scientists and public health professionals. Yet expertise alone is not enough.
Some questions need to be answered
Would an engineered pandemic be detected rapidly and early?
Would genomic surveillance track transmission in real time? Considering the fact that most of the part of the city lacks centralised wastewater system for metagenomic sequencing.
Would diagnostics reach remote communities fast enough?
Would medical countermeasures be distributed at scale?
Do we need to build a private system independent of the government to distribute these interventions to shield them from politics?
Many biosecurity models quietly assume these capabilities already exist. In much of Nigeria, they remain works in progress.
2. The Trust Problem
Trust can decline when scientific advice conflicts with cultural, political, or economic interests. Interventions developed in a pandemic response depend on something fragile: trust.
Will citizens believe official guidance?
Will communities accept restrictions?
Will they accept PPEs once they are developed?
Will they invest in buying air filters, or can we develop a cheap air freshener that can be used in the rural communities?
Will misinformation spread faster than public health messaging?
COVID-19 demonstrated that even wealthy countries struggled with these questions. Nigeria enters the equation with an additional challenge: public trust is uneven and varies dramatically across regions, communities, and institutions. An intervention that works on paper may fail if the population does not believe the messenger.
3. The Missing Ecosystem
No industry succeeds alone. The importance of supporting industries in preparing for a pandemic cannot be overemphasized. The need for the development of related industries is important; these include pharmaceutical manufacturing, cold-chain logistics, diagnostics companies, data systems, transportation networks, telecommunications infrastructure, and research institutions.
During an engineered pandemic, response capacity would depend on all of these sectors functioning simultaneously. Yet many discussions of biosecurity focus on the pathogen while paying less attention to the ecosystem required to respond to it.
A sequencing laboratory is valuable. A sequencing laboratory connected to reliable logistics, rapid reporting systems, diagnostics networks, and public health agencies is transformative.
4. The Hidden Assumption in Global Biosecurity
Reading Andrew Snyder-Beattie's work on catastrophic biological risk left me wondering whether biosecurity contains a hidden assumption. The assumption is not about pathogens. It is about countries. Many proposed defenses implicitly assume a state with strong infrastructure, high institutional trust, integrated supporting systems, and the ability to coordinate a rapid response. Nigeria is not unique in this regard. Much of the Global South faces similar constraints. The question is therefore not whether biosecurity interventions work.
The question is where they work. An engineered pandemic would not encounter an abstract defense system. It would encounter the realities of roads, clinics, markets, governance, trust, electricity, telecommunications, informal healthcare networks, and human behavior. Those realities differ dramatically from one country to another.
And unless biosecurity begins to account for those differences, we risk building defense models optimized for Boston, London, and Geneva while leaving Lagos, Kano, Kinshasa, and Dhaka as afterthoughts. The next engineered pandemic will not care where our models were developed. It will only test whether they work where they are needed most.
Biosecurity Environmental Fit (BEF) test
I therefore propose that interventions be designed to pass the biosecurity environmental fitness test. In which case, the intervention is evaluated to determine the degree to which a biosecurity intervention is compatible with the institutional, infrastructural, economic, and sociocultural environment in which it is deployed.
For example, the failure of many pandemic preparedness strategies in low-resource settings is often a problem of poor biosecurity environmental fit rather than poor science. Take wastewater metagenomics, for example. While this approach works well in resource-rich countries because of the centralized wastewater system, countries like Nigeria would fail because the wastewater system is not centralized. We need more deployment realism in biosecurity planning. Hence, the next generation of pandemic defense must embrace contextual biosecurity.
I therefore propose this hypothesis that the expected impact of a biosecurity intervention is a function not only of its technical efficacy but also of its environmental fit.
A perfect intervention with poor environmental fit may produce less benefit than a less sophisticated intervention with strong environmental fit.
Disclaimer
- I used AI to assist in writing this post, and it’s likely that >30% is AI-generated text.