When Institutions Fail, the Public Should Withdraw Support

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), still has his job. The question I keep returning to—the one we should all be asking—is how?

By March 2020, the world was in freefall. Restaurants shuttered permanently. Parents filed for unemployment while supervising their children’s Zoom classrooms from kitchen tables. Businesses built over decades were wiped out in weeks. Nurses wore garbage bags as protective gear. Elderly residents died in care homes as their families waited outside in parking lots, barred from entering. The head of the institution at the center of all of it walked away entirely unscathed, and arguably emboldened. In May 2022, he was re-elected without a single challenger on the ballot.

Millions of ordinary people lost jobs, savings, and businesses through no fault of their own, and the man most responsible for fumbling the global response faced no professional reckoning whatsoever. The institution he leads emerged from the worst public health catastrophe in a century, not humbled but acquisitive, lobbying to expanded its powers.