Disagree. The countries doing best now are mostly ones that placed bets and made investments in multiple candidates. It's just like insurance.
Thailand placed a bet that it could essentially lie to the world and trick tourists into coming back by proclaiming "Thailand is Covid Free" all whilst not testing. Recall?
As for resource, Thailand is NOT a poor country. Most of the people, however, are very poor. The government had plenty of resources to make investments in vaccine candidates which would have had them well up in the queue.