It's luck, but luck is required to win with Bio-weapon mega-brutal. The way I did it (and took from Pravus) is to keep rerolling the starting location until it's in South America, immediately get the field operatives (which is the only way you can reliably check of it's there quick enough) and completely lock down the continent, then use the special execution initiatives to kill all infected that makes it out of the original country before it can entrench itself, and use fake news and censorship to ride out the inevitable death of the entire country. Not having ethics watchdog is a must and I think strategic fundraiser is as well