Learning from COVID-19: A social science perspective on pandemic medicine. Comments on Benatar (S Afr J Sci. 2022;118(11/12))

Abstract

Understanding the public health crisis in the wake of COVID-19 requires the complementary knowledges of the biomedical and the social sciences. It also demands that we examine closely the ways in which health inequalities between the Global North and the Global South are sustained. That said, breakthroughs in African medical science, such as the discovery of the Omicron variant, place South Africa in the contradictory positions of inventor and supplicant (waiting in line for vaccines from rich countries) – something that social science and medicine are only beginning to make sense of.