Whatever is going on, there is something seriously amiss in South America: Several countries (per Worldometers) have come off high case peaks, but instead of a protracted drop following, in some there has been only a slight drop and then a leveling off of cases. In Brazil, at least temporarily the fatalities are still dropping (too soon to tell?) but in say, Argentina, fatalities are still rising, and in Colombia they are maintaining at essentially peak level. :-(
Communities are more disconnected in much of South America with a lot less individual mobility between the population centers. So you get a more prolonged and regionally based transmission pattern which expands at a slower rate until it’s introduced to a new population center. Add to that their reliance on the Chinese vaccines (which work maybe 50% of the time) and you have a recipe for disaster as they restart normal business.
But Brazil is its own special nightmare. Bolsonaro’s created an absolute disaster in Brazil, from claiming COVID-19 was no big deal, to encouraging people to completely ignore it, to claiming HCQ was a miracle cure for it, to investing in the Chinese vaccines that don’t even work. He turned Brazil into a breeding ground for mutation, and that’s precisely what happened. P.1 (Brazil) is now creating problems there and elsewhere.