It’s not quite as simple as that. First, it’s not certain that Omicron emerged in South Africa, but in another nearby sub-Saharan African country without the s

It’s not quite as simple as that. First, it’s not certain that Omicron emerged in South Africa, but in another nearby sub-Saharan African country without the same resources. All of South Africa’s neighbours with the exception of Botswana (which Moderna was making pay an eye-watering $30 per shot) are reliant on external aid for vaccination. So South Africa’s relative wealth is probably irrelevant here, and the argument about how insane the rich world’s refusal to help mass vaccinate the rest of the world is still applies. Second, South Africa only hit uptake constraints in the past month or so, until then it was affected by serious supply constraints like those other developing countries experienced, with the rich world getting production priority. Price, too, was a factor with pharmaceutical companies refusing to provide doses at anywhere close to their estimated actual cost. As a result money that the South African government could have spent on more vaccination outreach and infrastructure, especially in more rural and poor areas, was instead spent on buying doses. The long-standing supply constraints also meant that during a crucial time when public sentiment was more in favour of vaccination South Africa could not get enough doses to meet the demand and the delay allowed misinformation campaigns to wreak havoc. Had it been able to source enough supply in those crucial months, South Africa might have overcome a substantial portion of that hesitancy as people saw their friends, families, and colleagues get safely vaccinated. Third, there’s also a point to be made about the effect of predominantly American anti-vaccine misinformation on social networks, especially Facebook and YouTube, that has had a massive impact on South African society and the willingness of people to get vaccinated. Researchers have seen the same in other African countries. Not sure how that in particular can be solved or dealt with, but it needs to be taken into account when trying to understand global vaccine hesitancy.