TASK DEFINITION: Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: Michelle Obama is visiting Tanzania on the last day of President Barack Obama’s eight-day tour of Africa. She helped Laura Bush open a summit of the wives of African leaders, saying Africa was “at the hub of global development”. The summit aims to promote women’s well-being on the continent. The unusual Obama-Bush combination spotlights U.S. interest in the continent and the importance of Africa to the legacy of the president and his predecessor George W. Bush. For Obama, his three-nation tour has given him a break from a row over spy agency eavesdropping and a chance to promote U.S. commercial interests to a receptive African audience. Bush, who launched a widely praised program to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa when in office, was due to join Obama for a ceremony to remember the victims of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing in the Tanzanian capital. An expansion of a program to detect and treat cervical and breast cancer, Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, is due to be announced on Wednesday, organizers said. Former President Bush is due to speak at the first ladies’ summit the same day. The United Nations and non-governmental groups, including Bush’s foundation, launched Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon to provide health services to women in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, building on the U.S. HIV/AIDS prevention program. Claim: Michelle Obama, Laura Bush spotlight Africa women's health.

SOLUTION: U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and predecessor Laura Bush combined their star power to draw attention on Tuesday to efforts to improve women’s health and welfare in east Africa.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: In March 2020, as cities around the world announced “shelter-in-place” or “self-quarantine” orders in an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19, social media users started to circulate an image that supposedly showed a newspaper clipping from 1918 with a similar announcement in the town of Kelowna, British Columbia:  The clipping reads: Public Notice. Notice is hearby given that, in order to prevent the spread of Spanish Influenza, all Schools, public and private, Churches, Theaters, Moving Picture Halls, Pool Rooms and other places of amusement, and Lodge meetings, are to be closed until further notice. All public gatherings consisting of 10 or more are prohibited. D. W. Sutherland, Mayor. Kelowna, B.C., 19 October 1918. This is a genuine newspaper clipping that was published in the Kelowna Record in 1918 as this Canadian town, as well as the rest of the world, fought to prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus, commonly and misleadingly called the “Spanish Flu.” The clipping was archived by the University of British Columbia and can be viewed here. Kelowna, of course, was not the only city to issue such an order. We searched the archives of Newspapers.com and found several similar announcements in cities across the United States. On Oct. 10, 1918, for instance, Des Moines, Iowa, Mayor Thomas P. Fairweather announced that “in order to prevent the spread of Spanish Influenza and to protect the public health and safety,” he was directing “all public places of amusement, including theaters, moving pictures houses, dance halls and public dancing places, pool and billiard halls, skating rinks, outdoor athletic events, all public congregating places subject to unusual congestion, be closed.”  Thu, Oct 10, 1918 – Page 6 · The Des Moines Register (Des Moines, Iowa) · Newspapers.com Mobile, Alabama, took these closures one step further. In addition to closing restaurants and businesses, Mobile also asked people to refrain from kissing:  Tue, Oct 8, 1918 – 10 · Knoxville Sentinel (Knoxville, Tennessee) · Newspapers.com In 1918, just like today, individual cities and states made the decision to close schools, businesses, and public gathering places. According to a recent study from the Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology, cities that implemented strict social guidelines during the early days of the 1918 pandemic saw lower transmission rates and reduced total mortalities. Claim: "A newspaper clipping from 1918 documents a ""public notice"" from the city of Kelowna, British Columbia, announcing that schools, movie theaters, and other public places would be closed to prevent the spread of ""Spanish Influenza."" "

SOLUTION: During the 1918-19 H1N1 “Spanish” influenza pandemic, which infected a fifth to a third of the world population, and during which 50 million people have died worldwide, including an estimated 675,000 Americans, the United States has adopted a range of nonpharmaceutical (public health) interventions. These measures, which were similar to those currently adopted, included closure of schools and churches, banning of mass gatherings, mandated mask wearing, case isolation, and disinfection/hygiene measures. However, these measures were not implemented at the same time or for the same duration in different cities, nor were they uniformly followed. A recent analysis concluded that in some cities (San Francisco, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Kansas City), where the measures were implemented early, they reduced transmission rates by up to 30–50%. Cities that implemented such measures earlier had greater delays in reaching peak mortality, and had lower peak mortality rates and lower total mortality. The duration that these “social distancing” measures were kept in place correlated with a reduced total mortality burden. Although we still have no known effective therapy or vaccine prevention for this coronavirus, and the world is a quite different place than it was 100 years ago, the efficacy of the measures instituted during the 1918-19 pandemic gives us hope that the current measures will also limit the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: The story does a good job of pointing out one advantage of the pill approach compared to delivery via colonoscopy–the reduced cost. “There was a significant difference in cost. Though the procedures were done in a Canadian hospital, the FMTs delivered by colonoscopy cost nearly $500 USD more than the capsules, which cost about $300.” This was a close call. Early on, it says the pill was 90% effective for treating recurrent Clostridium difficile infections. Later on, the story explains that both were equally successful in treating the Clostridium difficile infections. It would take a bit of deduction to figure out that the 90% treatment rate applies to both the pills and colonoscopies. And the study puts this figure close to 96%. But we’ll give the benefit of the doubt and rate it satisfactory. The story gets a satisfactory here for including the differences between the two methods of delivery: One source is quoted saying, “colonoscopies and the anesthesia required for the procedure can put a lot of stress on a person’s body and can be complicated for the people most at risk for C. difficile infections.”  It could have gone a step further and reminded readers that a colonoscopy is an invasive procedure with the inherent risks of infection and perforation that obviously aren’t there when taking a pill. The story did not mention the other adverse events described in the paper such as nausea and vomiting, though. The story comments on the size of the study and quotes a researcher about strengths (a randomized, controlled trial) and limitations (selection bias) of the study. Selection bias, in this case, means many people were excluded from the clinical trial if they had any number of issues (patients with severe or complicated cases were excluded, for example), potentially biasing the results. In a more real-world setting, the effectiveness rate may drop once it’s tried on a wider range of people. No disease mongering here. The story does include comments from an independent source unaffiliated with the research. But, it doesn’t specify that the source has received research money from a drug company that’s developing microbiome drugs. Standard treatment for C. diff is antibiotics. This should have been mentioned. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t spell out whether the pill form FMT is now, or soon will be, available to the public. The story does mention that numerous other clinical trials are using FMT as a possible treatment for various diseases but it is unclear whether the pill form is an option for physicians at this point. What’s new here is that a pill form for delivery of a fecal transplant is being tested against a colonoscopy. The story established this. It does not appear to rely on a news release. Claim: Fecal transplant via a pill? Newsweek’s coverage points out possible selection bias of study participants

SOLUTION:
This Newsweek story reports on the results of a small study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study compared two methods of delivering a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT), via a colonoscopy or with an oral pill, to treat Clostridium difficile infection. An FMT involves taking feces from a healthy person and transplanting it into a sick person, to see if that can help eradicate unwanted microbes. Both approaches were equally successful and the oral pill — as might be expected — was perceived as less objectionable by patients. The story covers most of the bases we require, though it was unclear on the availability of the pill-based treatment, and what role standard antibiotics play in treatment and research outcomes. As the story points out, Clostridium difficile infections in hospital patients is a serious public health problem, infecting “half a million people in the United States per year and killing 15,000 people” annually. Fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) is fast becoming the treatment of choice in these cases and any improvement to facilitate this approach would obviously be welcome. The pill approach diminishes the “yuck factor” with this treatment, based on the study results.