The creation of large-scale infectious disease surveillance systems has been severely hampered by apathetic governments and institutions demonstrating biosecurity complacency and this has led to our poor response to COVID-19. Our current world order hints at renewed zoonotic and biological aggression exercises aimed at weakening our national security architecture, and the need for effective policy to practise transition mechanisms should be seen as an immediate concern towards preserving our global health security. Any effective policy needs to be shaped around global collaboration within a legislative framework that, remains active and agile whilst driving innovation to meet the demands of any immediate biological threat. A predictive exercise following a trajectory of virus behavioural patterns based in no small part on our efforts with COVID-19 should focus attention on the next pandemic causing pathogens. An effective policy should include the following viruses around which we should demonstrate renewed attention:
Ebola
Marburg virus disease
Lassa fever
MERS-CoV
SARS
Nipah
Zika
Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever
Rift Valley fever
Monkeypox
Biological threats need to be seen as an immediate cause of concern to any national security system, with the ability for sustained aggression through multiple variants. Future COVID-19 variants such as Pi, could make previous variants seem pale in comparison. A clear demonstration of vaccine evasion techniques by any variant of COVID-19 or a hybridization of any of the above with COVID-19, should be a reminder to us all that public health and biosecurity are vital for national security. A global policy that underscores the ubiquitous nature of viruses, should framework its effectiveness around the fact that we cannot always escape them, but our response and preparedness mechanisms should be based on sustainable in-depth study and research, with adequate resources and funding dedicated, all in an effort to better prepare us in defence of such threats. Global interagency interactions are imperative and underscore the importance of global surveillance mechanisms that are multisectoral and interdisciplinary lead. Governments need to formulate effective response tools that are proactive and not reactive as an exercise in human survival and safety, and this can only be done by widening the participatory effort to those outside of science.
Safeguarding of the human populace should not have to come at the price of creating different tiers of immunological protection (even if that is the result based on different physiological and genetic factors), but with a unified gold standard application towards reducing health inequality whilst increasing global health security. An example of this is a global code towards pharmaceutical development and prototype productions, that lends itself to technology transfer and the pooling of resources to drive the pharmaceutical industry towards collaboration and away from competition during times of crises. These initiatives can all be led by the lobbying power of special interest groups such as the aviation sector, who played a very important part in the globalization of pandemics, but whose engineering expertise and supply chain management activities can strengthen our response mechanisms.
COVID-19 vaccines are a strong demonstration of biotechnology’s potential to underscoring the protective tenants of global health security, but vaccines are only a small part of our defence armoury against future pandemics. We possess the tools that allow us to predict the next pandemic and need to leverage this new generation of public health technology, through sustainable efforts and political inclusion that replicates and mirrors our approach to any threat to national security, be it nuclear, chemical or conventional with the same level of urgency, engagement, advocacy and investment.
An analysis of the global catastrophe that zoonotic agents can cause, would be to frame it alongside a nuclear threat using the following comparative terms:
MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction
MAD –Mutating Advancing Disease
The litmus test for any successful governmental policy is how effective it can secure the safety and security of its population. A demonstration of this effective policy must emphasize investments in biosecurity systems and technologies that focus on expanding monitoring systems to discover biosecurity threats before they become widespread and using this to inform research capabilities.
An appreciation for the unpredictability of viral mutations and spread should not be ignored but be used as a marker for renewed biological agility and surveillance around which new policies need to be informed. Increased collaboration forms the basis for enhanced global health security, because any activities done in isolation without transparency and regulation, could accelerate both state and non-state actors’ efforts down a path of death and destruction. For example: candidate transmissible vectors focus mainly on engineering and testing transmissibility and genomic stability, thereby allowing viruses capable of infecting humans. Viral vectors engineered along these characteristics could be directly repurposed to deliberately cause harm. Transmissible vaccine research will drive innovative ways of engineering viral vectors to evade the immune response, as any pre-existing immunity to the vaccine vector will slow vaccine spread. Clear inclusive legislation needs to highlight the biosecurity risks.
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