Our COVID policies are moving backward
Regarding, “COVID admissions rise in U.S. hospitals” (Nation & World, Dec. 12): I found it disheartening to read that the government plans to stop paying for treatment with the antiviral Paxlovid in the coming months as the drug moves to the private market, where it will cost even more.
Public health leaders are dismayed at the abysmal uptake of the new bivalent vaccine, which hovers around 14%. However, the government’s plan for 2023 is to stop paying for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, which is expected to quadruple in price. New variants are already on the rise.
Don’t we want to encourage vaccinations? These proposed policies seem to be in stark contrast to our public health goals. We are going in the wrong direction.
In addition, an article on the same page of the paper said that NASA just spent $4 billion on the Orion test flight to the Moon. It gave me pause.
Gail Husson, San Leandro
Good role model
Regarding “Brock Purdy’s star turn propels 49ers to 35-7 rout of Brady and Bucs” (49ers, SFChronicle.com, Dec. 11): On Sunday, I took my 10-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son to the 49ers-Buccaneers game. After they helped cheer the Niners to an impressive 35-7 victory, we were riding the train home, and a passenger asked my daughter who her favorite quarterback was. She responded: Brock Purdy.
Not because he’d just played so spectacularly in his very first NFL start, outshining the incomparable Tom Brady, but because, she explained, “He’s relatable — because he knows what it’s like to be picked last.”
For all of us who have known that feeling and persevered, thank you, Brock, for giving us a wonderful storybook start to your career!
Stephen A. Silver, San Francisco
Do more for the Bay
Regarding “S.F. Bay can become a truly healthy body of water. But it’s going to take work” (Open Forum, Dec. 2): The recent Open Forum by two members of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board celebrates that the Bay isn’t as polluted as it was 50 years ago, thanks to the Clean Water Act. Then it correctly acknowledges there’s much more we need to do to make the Bay healthy.
Here’s the thing. As noted, the regional board “has the power to protect and restore” the Bay.
The board can set aggressive limits to reduce pollution from Bay Area sewage treatment plants that would prevent harmful red tides like the one the Bay just experienced. It can stop allowing refineries to dump toxic selenium into the Bay, which would make our fish healthier and safer to eat. It can enforce existing stormwater laws to reduce trash and bacteria in the Bay, instead of giving cities offsets, credits and deadline extensions. It can also own its responsibility for cleaning up the 1,000 toxic sites around the Bay’s shoreline that are in danger of flooding and spreading toxic waste into already overburdened communities.
The regional board has the ability to create a more resilient Bay, and we’ll continue advocating for the agency to do just that.
Sejal Choksi-Chugh, executive director,
San Francisco Baykeeper, Oakland
CEQA works as intended
Regarding “Big fight over housing at Nordstrom parking lot appears over. But will it get built?” (San Francisco, SFChronicle.com, Dec. 8): Milo Trauss of YIMBY Law called the revised environmental impact report an “unnecessary waste of time” for the proposed 27-story housing development at 469 Stevenson St. He’s flat-out wrong.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors was right to direct city planners to analyze — among other things — how the project might cause displacement and gentrification, important concerns for low-income residents of this vulnerable neighborhood.
Further, the revised report disclosed, for the first time, that vibrations from project construction could significantly damage nearby historic buildings.
Now, the city will require steps to address that impact, protecting valuable historical resources. Critics decry the cost of the report ($750,000), but that’s peanuts compared to the damage that would have otherwise been done.
This is a case where the California Environmental Quality Act did what it should: CEQA didn’t stop the project; it improved it.