Epidemics and diseases

2.1 Low tech solutions

Andrew Snyder-Beattie, of defensesindepth.bio: The Four Pillars: A Hypothesis for Countering Catastrophic Biological Risk

The authors start from the premise that humanity might be seriously underestimating biological risks, specifically from “unknown unknowns” like engineered pathogens or hypothetical “mirror bacteria.” They argue that our current strategy—making a list of bad bugs and building specific defences for each—is a game of whack-a-mole we’re destined to lose against a creative adversary. Instead, they propose a “generalized” defence strategy that ignores what the bug is and focuses on the physical constraints any pathogen faces, like the need to physically enter a human body, the eponymous four-pillar strategy.

Pillar 1: Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). They aren’t talking about standard surgical masks. They claim the “sweet spot” for cost and protection is the elastomeric respirator —those rubbery half-face masks you might see on a construction site. Their hypothesis is that stockpiling these for critical infrastructure workers (not necessarily everyone) could prevent societal collapse. At bulk-purchase rates these things are very cheap and have a long shelf life, leading to a population-level cost of cents per day; nations could store enough of these to keep the lights on and water running, even if the air outside were teeming with a super-virus.

Pillar 2: “Biohardening,” which is a fancy way of saying we need to make our buildings pathogen-resistant. The post suggests that if a pathogen persists in the environment (like dust or soil), social distancing won’t save us; we’d need actual physical barriers. They toss around ideas like Far-UVC light and advanced air filtration, but the most interesting idea is the potential for DIY biohardening. They suggest that with a guidebook and basic hardware store supplies (like furnace fans and insulation), regular people might be able to turn their homes into positive-pressure cleanrooms within two weeks.

Pillar 3 is detection, specifically “pathogen-agnostic” detection systems — essentially always-on genetic sequencers at airports and wastewater plants looking for anything weird, rather than just specific known viruses. The goal here is to catch ‘stealth’ pathogens that might spread silently for years (like an airborne HIV) before causing symptoms.

The fourth pillar is rapid medical countermeasures (making new drugs fast), but the authors largely gloss over this to focus on the first three, arguing that physical defences are currently the most neglected and actionable.

The authors wrap up with a surprisingly optimistic feasibility claim: they think the first three pillars could be substantially implemented by the end of 2027 for less than $1 billion (it’s not clear who they mean by “we” — the USA?). They argue that because these defences rely on physics (blocking particles) rather than biology (fighting specific proteins), they are “future-proof.” It’s definitely a hypothesis rather than a proven roadmap — they admit they need to stress-test ideas like the DIY cleanrooms — but they present it as a solvable engineering problem rather than a biological guessing game.

2.2 Contact tracing

Contact tracing is its own miniature study.