To the Editor:
Re “America’s Weight-reduction plan Is Feeding a Groundwater Disaster” (“Uncharted Waters” sequence, entrance web page, Dec. 30):
The world has been making meat principally the identical approach for about 10,000 years, by feeding crops to animals, in order that people can eat animals.
This technique of meat manufacturing is inefficient, requiring huge portions of land and water, and shifting crop manufacturing to lower-value crops for animal feed from high-value crops for human consumption.
Plant-based and cultivated meat use far much less land and water, and so they have a number of different advantages. The Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research launched a report in Might documenting how these “various proteins” can create alternatives for farmers, jobs within the heartland, extra selections for customers and strong export markets.
Like all extra environment friendly manufacturing technique, these new methods of creating meat are a win-win for business, which is why we’re seeing management in these sectors from main meat and meals firms together with ADM (Archer-Daniels-Midland), Cargill, Tyson, Nestle and JBS.
The C.S.I.S. report additionally paperwork advantages to our financial and nationwide safety and argues that the federal government ought to create favorable insurance policies for these industries, much like insurance policies that assist “prescription drugs, clear power know-how and superior chips for synthetic intelligence.”
Bruce Friedrich
Washington
The author is president of the Good Meals Institute, a nonprofit assume tank that promotes various proteins.
To the Editor:
what else in addition to altering tastes could also be contributing to the overtaxing of America’s aquifers? Extra mouths to feed.
Your story identifies the reason for the water disaster as a “dietary shift” within the nation towards extra hen and cheese, which it says has pushed an enormous acreage enlargement of water-intensive crops used for animal feed. However there’s not a single point out of inhabitants development.
It’s not simply that People doubled their per capita hen and cheese consumption prior to now 40 years; it’s that there are greater than 100 million extra U.S. residents than there have been again then. And the portion of U.S. animal feed that’s exported goes to a world inhabitants that has elevated 80 % from 1980.
How a lot of the stress on the nation’s groundwater is attributable to the final dietary wants of a rising inhabitants versus its “meals selections”? The article by no means addresses the matter. In actual fact, the inhabitants impact will get little, if any, consideration in a lot environmental reporting, which looks as if a conspicuous omission.
Peter Szekely
New York
Don’t Resist Paxlovid as Covid Rises Once more
To the Editor:
Re “Few Take Paxlovid, At the same time as Covid Surges Once more” (entrance web page, Jan. 5):
I remorse that so few of my main care colleagues prescribe Paxlovid to adults who check optimistic for Covid.
Drug interactions are simple to handle, often by quickly stopping or lowering the dose of the interacting medicine. The metallic aftertaste is straightforward to handle (I counsel sufferers to buy mints, Life Savers or Tic Tacs after they choose up their Paxlovid prescription).
And the concept that relapse is extra widespread in those that take Paxlovid as in contrast with those that don’t has been soundly debunked (the chance of relapse is small, whether or not or not Paxlovid is used).
Main care suppliers who’re unavailable to sufferers who want them after hours or on weekends — on-line feedback on the article have been replete with tales of sufferers unable to acquire prescriptions — have to rethink their selection of career.
And 48,000 avoidable deaths from Covid, cited in a Paxlovid research that you just report on, are to not be taken flippantly.
Mark E. Horowitz
Brooklyn
The author is a household doctor.
To the Editor:
Whereas your article precisely identifies boundaries to Paxlovid use, it overlooks how pandemic fatigue shapes public attitudes about new Covid remedies. Attributing low use partially to affected person wariness overlooks the necessity for proactive doctor engagement and public well being outreach.
This outreach ought to goal susceptible communities immediately, resembling seniors, the uninsured and folks of coloration. For example, assisted dwelling services and retirement communities might associate with the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention to run consciousness campaigns.
Quite than assume that sufferers will decline, suppliers ought to begin conversations to deal with hesitancy and falsehoods. Certainly, physicians ought to proactively tackle pandemic fatigue and different considerations, whereas educating sufferers about Paxlovid’s lifesaving potential.
Cameron J. Sabet
Alexandria, Va.
The author is a medical pupil.
Taylor Swift’s Group of Followers
To the Editor:
Re “The Pleasure of Communal Girlhood, the Anguish of Teen Women,” by Jessica Bennett (Opinion, Dec. 31):
I couldn’t resist this essay as a die-hard Beyoncé and Taylor Swift fan, a mom of younger children, and somebody who remembers viscerally the troublesome days of center college and worries for immediately’s children who navigate them amid social media.
Ms. Bennett’s account of watching the Eras film (which I additionally watched, riveted, from my sofa) rang true. That “good window of girlhood” Ms. Swift helps us entry isn’t one thing solely women can attain. Adults are accessing it, too. It’s a state, as Ms. Bennett notes, of self-knowledge with out self-consciousness and of proudly owning imperfections and sharing them freely. It’s being open and susceptible with out fearing (and even realizing) it.
As we grow old, however the fixed oversharing on social media, genuine vulnerability turns into scarce. Ms. Swift’s lyrics, capturing each element of her ups and downs, transport us again to that place of unabashed imperfection and figuring-it-all-out — and we expertise that as a group. The communal fan expertise, tacky although it sounds, helps us overcome immediately’s obstacles to genuine human connection.
To the Editor:
Re “The Election No One Appears to Need Is Coming,” by Gail Collins and Bret Stephens (The Dialog, Jan. 9):
I agree with Mr. Stephens that changing Kamala Harris with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan as President Biden’s vice-presidential candidate could be a wise transfer for the Democratic ticket.
Ms. Harris reveals little spark and is a drag on a Biden re-election. She doesn’t current any specific causes to vote for Mr. Biden.
Ms. Whitmer would. She has been a charismatic governor, standing as much as the far proper in her state and never taking any nonsense from her political opponents. I consider she could be interesting to many centrists as a future president. She’s somebody you may consider in.
Mr. Biden ought to enchantment to Ms. Harris to step apart within the pursuits of the social gathering and the nation, with guarantees of a major function — definitely extra substantial than what veeps are inclined to do — in a hoped-for second Biden time period.
This concept might be a win-win, particularly if Ms. Harris might discover her solution to proposing it herself for causes simply defined to her supporters.
Marc Bloom
Princeton, N.J.
