Characters: Healthy Chicken | Careful language

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Abundant improvement of chickens
Healthy for all of us

It’s a shame some kids didn’t have many Easter eggs to decorate this year — the bird flu affecting chickens sent egg prices skyrocketing.

If we commercialize their inhumane living conditions – if we send millions of birds to horrible deaths from the flu – hundreds crowded into extremely close quarters with little or no fresh air or sunlight.

Whether you eat the eggs or simply enjoy decorating them, this is a good moment to reconsider the birds’ living conditions. We know very well that viruses can jump from one species to another – so the shrinking lifestyle affects not only birds, but also humans.

The next time you see an opportunity to sign a petition to improve the living conditions of birds, act on it. The better the living environment we provide our birds, the less likely they are to contract viruses that originate from them.

Patrice Wagner
auckland

Careful language
Drive effective policies

Re “What Could Explain the Wild Winter of 2023?” (Page A1, April 7).

Appreciation for periodic graphics comparing snowfall amounts in different years. I appreciate that you usually use “average” instead of “normal” for something like average. “Normal” is inappropriate for two reasons.

First, “normal” people are not limited to average characteristics. There is always a range from normal, perhaps a standard deviation or two.

Second, snowpack and precipitation follow log-normal distributions, meaning that a few large events skew the mean. From your published graph, one finds the average snowpack to be 120% of the median and twice the potential value. 63 percent of the year below average. Rainfall in Livermore is below average 60% of the time, and 11″ of rain is most likely, not 14.5″.

Similar skewed statistics apply to income, house prices, and many other human characteristics. Careless word usage can lead to unclear thinking, which can then lead to poor public policy.

Alan Burnham
Livermore

The United States must provide adequate funding
Global healthcare

Answer: “Marin County Ranked Healthiest in California, Tackles Equity Challenges” (April 8).

Proactive health interventions and preventative work have led Marin County to the top of the healthiest counties in California, but work remains to be done for marginalized and underserved groups in Marin across the East Bay and globally.

A well-trained and equipped health workforce is essential to building sustainable, resilient health systems, especially in regions of the world that are already lagging behind. Comprehensive primary health care can anchor a community by building trust through ongoing relationships with community-based providers. Investing in primary health care can particularly benefit women and people in low-income countries where geographic, political and financial barriers exist.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, is uniquely positioned to make a difference as the ranking member of the subcommittee that decides on foreign aid funding. I urge him to continue to increase funding for frontline healthcare workers and work to ensure that essential supplies are consistently stocked on the frontlines.

Sabrina Baffert
Berkeley

We need to protect our victims
of domestic violence

According to national statistics, about 20 people are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States every minute. We need tougher laws and more protections for those accused of domestic violence.

It can take as little as 30 minutes to get bail out of jail and commit more crimes. If the defendant is granted bail, they should be placed under house arrest to keep the victim safe. Relocation services should be offered for additional protection of the accused Imagine the relief a victim feels when their domestic violence abuser is taken into custody and the panic they feel when they are told they have been released.

This is the reality for many people who have experienced domestic violence abuse. Write to the Legislature and propose a new bill that would add protections for victims of domestic violence and keep their abusers behind bars until they can prove their innocence in a judicial process.

Natalie Withington
Union City

Fox’s lies for ratings
Pathetic definition

The discovery phase of Dominion’s voting machine defamation lawsuit against Fox News has released internal Fox emails and texts that reveal that Fox anchors personally viewed Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud and stolen elections as false, and that some of his legal team, notably Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, was a liar