As the COVID-19 pandemic exposed structural cracks in public health policies and health care systems around the globe, the humanities intensified arguments for their inclusion in health care, health education, policy development, and public health initiatives, citing, among other things, their existing work on cultural analysis, gender, race, and class, disease construction, illness narratives, the decoding of text, and perspective-taking. At the onset of the pandemic, humanities scholars from across the world quickly produced editorials and lecture series, arguing for, and demonstrating the value of, the humanities in responding to the global health crisis.