Evidence from 2021 shows that the World Health Organization (WHO) remained a central reference point for both public discourse and major platforms’ COVID‑19 policies, contrary to the prediction that “nobody cares about the W.H.O. anymore” by sometime in 2021.

Key points:

• YouTube explicitly grounded its COVID‑19 medical‑misinformation rules in WHO guidance. Its policy banned content that “contradict[s] expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO),” and this language was actively enforced in 2021—for example, in the takedown of UK MP David Davis’s speech about vaccine passports and other removals that cited the WHO clause verbatim. (bigbrotherwatch.org.uk)

• Facebook/Meta in 2021 expanded removal of COVID‑19 and vaccine false claims “following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization,” and labeled posts about vaccines with links to WHO information, positioning the WHO as a primary authoritative source in its COVID‑19 Information Center. (about.fb.com)

• A 2022 longitudinal study of Twitter vaccine misinformation during 2021 treated the CDC and WHO explicitly as “authoritative sources” when comparing low‑credibility vs. mainstream information flows, indicating that in research and mainstream communication WHO was still regarded as a key authority, even though low‑credibility content sometimes got more reshares. (arxiv.org)

• Major news coverage of variants in 2021 (e.g., Delta and Omicron) centered on WHO announcements; outlets like CNBC, Euronews, and others framed WHO’s designation of Omicron as a “variant of concern” as the pivotal trigger for government responses and travel restrictions, underscoring WHO’s continuing agenda‑setting role. (cnbc.com)

• While some political and online communities were openly skeptical of the WHO, the organization was still structurally embedded in platform rules and official communications throughout 2021. Later rollbacks of strict COVID‑19 moderation by platforms happened mostly in 2023–2024, outside the prediction’s 2021 time frame and even then did not make WHO irrelevant. (apnews.com)

Because WHO remained widely treated as a key authority by large platforms and in mainstream public discourse through 2021, the prediction that by then “nobody cares about the W.H.O. anymore” is best judged as wrong.