We live in tragic times. Millions are sheltering in place to avoid exacerbating the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. How should we respond to such tragedies? This paper argues that the human right to health can help us do so because it inspires human rights advocates, claimants, and those with responsibility for fulfilling the right to try hard to satisfy its claims. That is, the right should, and often does, give rise to what I call_ the virtue of creative resolve_. This resolve (...) embodies a fundamental commitment to finding creative solutions to what appear to be tragic dilemmas. Contra critics, we should not reject the right even if it cannot tell us how to ration scarce health resources. Rather, the right gives us a response to apparent tragedy in motivating us to search for ways of fulfilling everyone’s basic health needs. (shrink)

How should states and international organizations allocate global health resources? This paper examines proposals for distributing these resources in the literature. First, we look at the literature on the metrics for measuring what matters and consider how they might be modified to avoid some common objections—e.g., that these measures discriminate against the disabled or fail to give due weight to helping the young (or old) or those in present (or future) generations. Second, we canvas existing approaches to evaluating allocations of (...) health‐related resources utilizing such measures and advance a new way of doing so. We suggest that it is important to provide substantive arguments for directly evaluating alternative allocations, but there is also room for deliberation about fair procedures for selecting allocation criteria and securing just outcomes. (shrink)