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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.
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Paragraph: While Vice President Mike Pence runs the White House coronavirus task force, his wife is leading a parallel effort to help people deal with anxiety and other unsettling emotions brought on by the pandemic. Two months into the crisis, millions of Americans are struggling to cope with the fallout, whether it’s losing loved ones, losing a job or staying at home more than they ever have. “This is something we’re all going through together, and it’s not like anything we’ve ever gone through before,” Karen Pence told The Associated Press in a recent interview. She is lead ambassador for the PREVENTS task force, an acronym for the President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End the National Tragedy of Suicide. It was created in 2019 to focus on veterans’ suicides but recently launched a social media campaign called “More Than Ever Before” to help reach Americans before they get to “the end of their rope,” she said. “We want them to know there’s help out there, and there are things that we can do to prevent some of the effects that this is having on our mental health as a nation,” Mrs. Pence said. She joined the PREVENTS effort early this year, before the extent of the coronavirus threat in the U.S. became clear. A majority of Americans say they have felt at least one negative emotional reaction in the last seven days, according to a new poll  conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for the Data Foundation. At least a third of Americans reported feeling nervous, depressed, lonely or hopeless at least one day in the past week. But taken together, 61% of Americans say they have felt at least one of those emotions at one point throughout the week. Nine percent also reported having a physical reaction, such as sweating, nausea or hyperventilating, when thinking about their experience with the pandemic on one or more days. The new poll, conducted last week, is the second wave of the COVID-19 Household Impact Survey. Thirty-eight percent of Americans say they felt lonely at least one of the last seven days. Sixteen percent said they felt that way on three or more days. And 38% said they felt hopeless about the future at least once, with 14% saying they felt that way on three or more days. Those patterns are similar for feelings of anxiety and depression. Mrs. Pence says there are four basic things people can do to help them cope with the situation, beginning with a daily “check in” with themselves to gauge how they’re feeling and then reach out to a friend or other individual if they need someone to hear them out. They should also figure out what puts them at ease, whether it’s reading, cooking or another activity, and schedule time for it. Mrs. Pence, a watercolor artist, said she’s been working on a painting of a friend’s house and is designing her family’s Christmas card. People should also talk about their struggles and successes and include children in those conversations. And if they’re concerned about themselves or someone else, they should feel comfortable calling the national suicide prevention lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK. “It’s OK to not be OK,” said Mrs. Pence. She posts tips and information about available resources on her Twitter page. Among those grappling with the new dynamics is Jody Garrison, who works from her Milwaukee home, turning old books into journals and selling them online. It’s the rare trip to the grocery store — or to the auto mechanic shop later this week to pick up her car after a repair — that brings on the anxiety. “You worry about, ‘Am I going to catch something from touching something?’ so I truly don’t go out in public much at all,” she said by telephone. Being retired helps, as Garrison had long settled into a routine. The 68-year-old plays with her grandchildren online and meets friends there, and is exercising and reading more, too. “I think what’s kept my sanity is that I’ve tried really hard to stay focused on things that kept me happy in the past to sustain the thought of being alone,” she said. “I’m trying to stay focused on the positive, and when you do that, it doesn’t seem quite so bad.” Anxious to see the U.S. economy humming again, President Donald Trump has pushed back against those who warn that coronavirus cases will spike after state lockdowns are lifted. He says more people will die from suicide and substance abuse the longer schools, businesses and workplaces remain closed and people stay at home. Experts say rates of suicide and substance abuse were rising before the pandemic, but it’s too soon to know how much they may have increased during the outbreak. Suicide prevention and mental health advocates said they welcome the PREVENTS effort but would like to see more spending on a more coordinated effort to reduce deaths caused by despair. “You don’t have to be a mental health expert to know we’re in deep trouble,” said former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., co-chair of a new public-private effort to respond to mental health and suicide prevention needs both during and after the coronavirus. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S., with 48,000 deaths reported in 2018, said Jerry Reed, who serves with Kennedy on the executive committee of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, which is separate from the virus-related initiative. Reed, a longtime suicide prevention advocate, said he’d like to see the same amount of effort that went into combating the coronavirus put into responding to mental health needs. “I like the fact that we all came together to flatten the physical curve of the virus,” Reed said. “I would suggest we all come together to flatten the mental health curve.” ___ Associated Press writers Tammy Webber in Chicago and Hannah Fingerhut in Washington contributed to this report. ___ Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap ___ This story has been corrected to show that Kennedy represented Rhode Island, not Massachusetts. Claim: Karen Pence: ‘It’s OK to not be OK’ during pandemic.
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Karen Pence says it’s OK to not be OK during the coronavirus pandemic.


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Paragraph: The nation saw one of the worst flu outbreaks in nearly a decade during the 2017-2018 season, with more than 900,000 cases of hospitalizations and over 80,000 deaths, the CDC estimates here  Between Oct. 1, 2018 and Jan. 5, 2019, about 6 million to 7 million people were reported to have contracted the flu, according to data collected by the health agency. Health regulators have been trying to combat flu outbreaks in the United States and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first new flu medication in nearly two decades last year. The CDC last month signaled the start of the flu season (click here), saying that 24 states and Guam were reporting widespread cases, with the H1N1 virus being the predominant strain. The dominant flu strain during the last season, H3N2, has been linked with severe disease and death, particularly among children and the elderly. The agency continues to recommend vaccination as the best way to reduce the risk of flu and advised people who are at high risk category to approach hospital for treatment with a flu antiviral drug. Claim: Up to 84,000 Americans hospitalized with flu in past three months: CDC.
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An estimated 69,000 to 84,000 Americans were hospitalized due to the flu in the last three months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday.


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Paragraph: Washington state’s largest metropolis sweated through its hottest June on record, going fortnights without even a drizzle. Seattleites jokingly refer to the month of “Juneuary” for the wet and cold they usually endure before longer, dryer sunny days arrive in July, typically persisting into September. This summer, however, they have shrugged off the rain gear and flannel and taken to drinking “iced” lattes. Many, including Mayor Ed Murray, find themselves oddly yearning for the cloud cover on which Rain City’s identity was forged. Murray said the heat has kept him up at night in his brick Tudor-style house, which he has nicknamed the “little Dutch oven.”  “Obviously people in Seattle love a little more sun but also nothing is built for it,” Murray said. “I miss my rain.”  With an estimated 662,400 residents, the Emerald City, as the city is nicknamed, lies between the brackish Puget Sound and the Cascade Mountains which squeeze moisture out of east-bound fronts moving over the city. It is so dry in the state that a wildfire is burning in a  rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula and Governor Jay Inslee issued a statewide drought emergency in May as the snowpack in the mountains fell to historic lows. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport received just 0.23 inches (0.58 cm) of rain for June, down from the normal 1.57 inches (3.98 cm). To be sure, drought conditions are affecting cities down the U.S. West Coast, which is embroiled in a particularly fierce wildfire season that has prompted water-use and burn restrictions. Seattle’s public utility downgraded the water supply outlook from “good” to “fair” on Wednesday amid higher-than-usual water consumption and record-low stream flows into reservoirs, urging residents to limit plant-watering. Murray said the city had enough water and energy this year but was being pushed to the limit. “A second year with such little snowpack would be a crisis,” he said, referring to the affect on the broader region’s cold, clear salmon rivers and bountiful farms and orchards. While the current situation is “mega extreme in terms of our temperatures,” it is unlikely that it is caused by human-induced global warming because the heat-wave is due to an unusual large-scale air pattern, University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor Clifford Mass said. Relief is forecast heading into the weekend, with a chance of rain on Sunday and cooler temperatures in the week ahead, Mass said. But overall the summer will be warmer than normal as Seattle enters it driest period of the year. Meanwhile, parched lawns have turned beige and the city opened cooling shelters. At local hardware stores, air conditioning units and fans have been flying off the shelves; one Lowes store sold 16 air-conditioning units in a matter of minutes after it opened. “This is Sicily in Seattle, with nearly 16 hours of daylight,” Seattle-born author Timothy Egan wrote in the New York Times on July 3. Some people have embraced the dry skies and sun. “Everybody is a bit nicer. People say ‘Hi’ to each other. It’s not the hanging their head when they walk by each other,” said Nicole Sullivan, a management consultant who has used the heat as an opportunity to take her paddle board on Shilshole Bay on balmy evenings. “How do we re-market ourselves if we are not ‘Rain City’ or the ‘Emerald City,’?” Mayor Murray deadpanned. “If we’re not green anymore, what’s going to be our new color?” Claim: Residents in soggy Seattle rebel against the sun.
answer:

Seattle’s mayor is losing sleep over the unusually hot, dry weather that is causing a run on air conditioners and fans in the famously rainy city.