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: "President Barack Obama drew harsh criticism for comparing the terrorist group Islamic State to a ""JV team"" — and then again for claiming that’s not what he said (PolitiFact rated that statement False). On Sunday, another one of his characterizations of the situation in the Middle East came under fire as the political talk shows debated his plan for dealing with instability there. Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden was asked about Obama’s decision to arm local rebel groups in Syria to help fight the Islamic State there. He wondered why Obama was suddenly interested in arming opposition forces there. ""The president referred to the Syrian opposition just a few months ago as pharmacists and doctors, and so on,"" Hayden said. ""We've turned on the dime in terms of our expectation for them, so if we're going to get them to this force that he said it was fantasy to rely on to the force that's going to be, as (White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough) said, the anvil in a combined arms operation, they're going to need an awful lot of help."" In this case, we're checking whether Obama described the Syrian rebels as ""pharmacists and doctors."" We're not checking whether the rebels actually are pharmacists or doctors, as we'll explain in a bit. We tried to reach Hayden but were unsuccessful. McDonough, though, was asked about Obama’s comment during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. ""I think that the question that the president was responding to at the time was looking back a couple of years,"" McDonough said. ""We have had a relationship with these fighters now for a couple of years. They're getting better and more capable."" If that’s the case, then maybe Hayden was embellishing Obama’s comments. Keep in mind, the debate over arming the Syrian opposition forces in their fight against Syrian President Bashar al Assad has been ongoing for years. PolitiFact noted in a fact-check last week that several key members of Obama’s national security team favored the move in August 2012. Let’s take a look at exactly what Obama said. We found four instances of Obama describing the Syrian opposition forces in recent months. May 29 Obama discussed his foreign policy during an interview with NPR. He was asked if conditions were more ""robust"" for aiding the rebels than in the past. ""I wouldn't say the conditions are better,"" Obama said. ""In many ways, the conditions are worse. ""When you talk about the moderate opposition, many of these people were farmers or dentists or maybe some radio reporters who didn't have a lot of experience fighting,"" he added. ""But creating a capacity for them to hold ground, to be able to rebuff vicious attacks, for them to be able to also organize themselves in ways that are cohesive — all that takes, unfortunately, more time than I think many people would like."" For what it’s worth, the Washington Post fact-checked Obama’s claim about the makeup of Syrian rebels as farmer, dentists and radio reporters and found it to be dubious. June 19 In mid June, a few days before Obama asked Congress for $500 million to train and equip some of the Syrian opposition, he discussed the makeup of those forces on a couple occasions. In a June 19 press conference, a reporter asked Obama if ""the expansion of the Syria war into Iraq changed your mind about the type of weapons and training we’re now willing to give the opposition there?"" Obama responded: ""The question has always been, is there the capacity of moderate opposition on the ground to absorb and counteract extremists that might have been pouring in, as well as an Assad regime supported by Iran and Russia that outmanned them and was ruthless. ""And so we have consistently provided that opposition with support,"" Obama said. ""Oftentimes, the challenge is if you have former farmers or teachers or pharmacists who now are taking up opposition against a battle-hardened regime, with support from external actors that have a lot at stake, how quickly can you get them trained; how effective are you able to mobilize them. And that continues to be a challenge."" The next morning, he made a similar comment to CBS' This Morning. ""When you get farmers, dentists and folks who have never fought before going up against a ruthless opposition in Assad, the notion that they were in a position suddenly to overturn not only Assad but also ruthless, highly trained jihadists if we just sent a few arms is a fantasy."" Aug. 8 In a sitdown with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Obama again was asked about why he chose not to arm the Syrian rebels. ""This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards,"" Obama said. Counter to what McDonough said Sept. 14, Obama very much seems to be talking about the Syrian opposition in the present and the challenges in providing them with assistance and arms. This continued up until August. The one caveat that Hayden does not mention is the conversation was largely in the context of the opposition’s capacity to go up against Assad and the Syrian regime, not their ability to fight a rogue terrorist organization like the Islamic State. Still, it is a noticeable about-face that as recently as August, Obama told Friedman he believed ""there’s not as much capacity as you would hope"" for providing these individuals training. Our ruling In discussing Obama’s decision to arm opposition forces in Syria, Hayden said, ""The president referred to the Syrian opposition just a few months ago as pharmacists and doctors, and so on."" We found several examples of Obama, as recently as June and August, characterizing the Syrian rebels as pharmacists and doctors, as well as dentists, radio reporters and teachers. Usually he was describing their capacity to fight Assad, but that doesn’t make Hayden’s point any less accurate." Claim: The president referred to the Syrian opposition just a few months ago as pharmacists and doctors, and so on.

SOLUTION: "In discussing Obama’s decision to arm opposition forces in Syria, Hayden said, ""The president referred to the Syrian opposition just a few months ago as pharmacists and doctors, and so on."" We found several examples of Obama, as recently as June and August, characterizing the Syrian rebels as pharmacists and doctors, as well as dentists, radio reporters and teachers. Usually he was describing their capacity to fight Assad, but that doesn’t make Hayden’s point any less accurate."

PROBLEM: Paragraph: "Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has made no secret of wanting to close the homeless shelter at Peachtree and Pine streets. Reed, who has been active in downtown’s post-Recession resurgence, says he’ll push for the city to acquire the property through eminent domain and turn it into a police precinct and fire station. Health concerns are a major reason for closing the Peachtree-Pines shelter, Reed said during a lunchtime speech to Atlanta’s Commerce Club on Tuesday, Aug. 11. ""Peachtree and Pine is one of the leading sites for tuberculosis in the nation,"" he told the crowd. Reed said top officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently asked to meet with him and ""laid out how tuberculosis cases, not in Georgia, but across America, are being traced back to Peachtree and Pine."" Could Peachtree-Pine, billed as the largest homeless shelter in the Southeast, be a leading site for tuberculosis in the nation? PolitiFact decided to do some checking. First a little background. The homeless are prime candidates for tuberculosis because they typically have greater exposure to cold weather, are in crowded conditions when they stay in shelters and lack proper nutrition and medical care. That means shelters, such as Peachtree-Pine, have to be vigilant to avoid becoming breeding grounds for TB, which is spread person to person through the air and caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis. TB normally attacks the lungs, but also can strike the kidney, spine, brain or another body part. In most cases, tuberculosis is treatable and curable, although people can die if they don’t receive the proper treatment. Most people live with the bacteria, or latent TB infection, without feeling sick or showing symptoms. In 2014, 9,412 new tuberculosis cases were reported in the U.S., 334 in Georgia, according to the CDC. A new drug-resistant strain of TB was discovered in 2008 at the shelter at Peachtree and Pine, which is run by the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless. The strain was labeled G05625 TB by the CDC. The research To fact check Reed’s statement, we reached out to Fulton County government, the CDC, the mayor’s office and the Georgia Department of Public Health, as well as shelter management. Anita Beaty, Peachtree-Pine’s executive director, rejects Reed’s assessment of the shelter and says it is ""100 percent compliant"" with CDC protocol for spotting, treating and avoiding the spread of TB. She said Reed and the business community have conspired for years to force the shelter to close so they can take over its prime location, just south of Midtown and in sight of the Fox Theatre. Tuberculosis has been a worry at all Atlanta and Fulton County shelters, not just Peachtree-Pine, for years. But alarm bells apparently really started going off after an uptick in TB cases last year. ""At a time when the incidents of tuberculosis has been declining across the metropolitan Atlanta area and the rest of Georgia, it has actually increased in Fulton County,"" Brenda Fitzgerald, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, wrote Fulton County Commission Chair John Eaves in April. A month later, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were sitting down for the first of two meetings with Reed about the ongoing TB problem generally, and Peachtree-Pine specifically. ""Our inability to control (the Peachtree-Pine) outbreak has led to infections in multiple other states,"" Philip A. LoBue and Jonathan Mermin, doctors with the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, wrote Reed after they met in May. Based on interviews, data and documents that PolitiFact reviewed, here’s a summary of the major points. -- Since 2008, new cases of the drug-resistant strain of TB that originated at the Peachtree-Pine shelter have turned up in metro Atlanta and Georgia as well as eight other states -- Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. (Genotype evidence, similar to a fingerprint, exists for every strain of TB, and that’s how every new case of G05625 in the state and nation can be traced to the Peachtree-Pine shelter. Similarly, that’s how the Ebola outbreak in west Africa in 201, was traced back to a 2-year-old from a small village in Guinea who died in 2013 and who became known around the world as Patient Zero.) -- At Fulton County’s four shelters, the number of TB cases rose by 230 percent, from 13 in 2013 to 43 in 2014. Twenty-two of the 43 cases, or slightly more than 50 percent, were at Peachtree-Pine. (The CDC defines a large outbreak as being 10 or more cases, CDC spokesman Brian Katzowitz said.) -- The number of drug-resistant G05625 tuberculosis cases, those linked to Peachtree-Pine, grew 10-fold from 2013 to 2014, from two to 23. -- Fulton County accounted for 82 percent of all cases of that strain of tuberculosis in Georgia and 69 percent of all cases of the strain in the United States. -- At least four clients of the Peachtree-Pine shelter, according to Fitzgerald, have died of tuberculosis since early 2014. In her letter to Eaves, Fitzgerald said, public health researchers identified the homeless shelter at the corner of Peachtree and Pine Streets ""as a major source of the current outbreak. ""If it [tuberculosis]  gains a foothold in the community, then the cost in healthcare and human suffering will be incalculable,"" she wrote. Jessica A. Corbitt-Dominguez, director of external affairs for Fulton County government, said Fulton health workers, in conjunction with officials from the Georgia Department of Public Health and CDC, responded to the outbreak with an aggressive campaign of education, testing and treatment. Anyone with active disease was relocated from the shelters while in treatment under the supervision of Fulton Health and Wellness. The county set up special teams that make daily visits to shelters to perform screenings and administer medicines, Corbitt-Dominguez said. In June 2015, the county health department also signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with four shelters, including Peachtree and Pine. This was considered a significant step since a lack of administrative controls and protocols is considered a likely contributor to the spread of TB. As of this month, the number of 2015 confirmed TB cases at Fulton homeless shelters is 13, Corbitt-Dominguez said. Beaty’s attorney last week provided reporters with a certificate showing the shelter is fully in compliance with the CDC’s TB protocol, and Beaty told PolitiFact ""it’s ludicrous to think we wouldn’t be on it."" Corbitt-Dominguez confirmed that the shelter has never been cited by the county, although Eaves has said there have been concerns about the shelter’s TB safeguards. In a letter to Fitzgerald, he wrote that the shelter’s administration ""routinely exhibits sub-optimal administration of the procedures required to control the spread of this disease."" Beaty said Reed’s statement makes clear he ""is just not getting good information."" ""We have been cleared by Fulton County, which is on site every day to monitor. And we’ve got 100 percent clearance from the CDC’s requirements,"" she said. ""We resent those easy headlines that have no basis in fact and that marginalize homeless people in our facilities."" Tom Andrews, president of the non-profit Mercy Care, which operates 14 clinics, some associated with shelters, said the strain of TB originating at Peachtree-Pine has to be a major concern. Since it is medicine-resistant, it requires a more expensive and longer treatment program, Andrews said. The CDC estimates that the costs of treating a person with TB increases with greater resistance. Direct costs in 2010 U.S. dollars average from $17,000 to treat drug-susceptible TB to $430,000 to treat the most drug-resistant form, according to the agency’s website. So is it a national leader in TB? We asked the mayor’s office for evidence to back up Reed’s statement that Peachtree-Pine ""is one of the leading sites for tuberculosis in the nation."" Anne Torres, his spokeswoman, provided us copies of the letters from Fitzgerald and the doctors, as well as a highly technical report from the CDC. We reached out to the CDC. A spokesperson said agency officials would not comment on the mayor’s public statements. CDC officials also would not identify the states where they said the TB strain from Peachtree-Pine had spread. We were able to obtain that list from the Georgia Department of Public Health, as well as the number of cases of G05625 strain TB in each state from 2008 to 2014. The most were in Florida (14), followed by California (8) and North Carolina and Alabama (2 each). New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and South Carolina each reported one case in the five years -- for a total of 30 in the eight states in five years. But do 30 cases over a several-year period raise Peachtree-Pine to a leading site of TB in the nation? We posed that question to Philip Hopewell, a leading tuberculosis expert and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. ""Peachtree and Pine is clearly  a major site for transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and it may be one of the leading sites in the nation,"" Hopewell said. ""However, there are not data from every such facility in the country,"" he added. ""To say that the Atlanta facility is one of the leading sites in the country -- it probably is -- implies that there are data with which to compare the Atlanta facility. Thus, strictly speaking, what he said can't be backed with evidence. Even so, I wouldn't fault the mayor for saying this."" Our ruling Mayor Kasim Reed said ""Peachtree and Pine is one of the leading sites for tuberculosis in the nation."" Thirty cases of a medicine-resistant strain of TB in eight states have been traced back to the shelter at Peachtree and Pine. The shelter also had a large share of the cases in a recent TB outbreak in Fulton County and four TB deaths, according to state data. CDC officials clearly believe it’s a concern, but a leading tuberculosis expert says there’s a dearth of comparative data." Claim: Peachtree and Pine is one of the leading sites for tuberculosis in the nation.

SOLUTION: "Mayor Kasim Reed said ""Peachtree and Pine is one of the leading sites for tuberculosis in the nation."" Thirty cases of a medicine-resistant strain of TB in eight states have been traced back to the shelter at Peachtree and Pine. The shelter also had a large share of the cases in a recent TB outbreak in Fulton County and four TB deaths, according to state data. CDC officials clearly believe it’s a concern, but a leading tuberculosis expert says there’s a dearth of comparative data."

PROBLEM: Paragraph: The message - part of a barrage of texts sent to doctors across the nation - urged him to sign a petition in support of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug touted by President Donald Trump as a potential miracle cure for COVID-19, the contagious and sometimes deadly respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus. “Tell Trump to CUT RED TAPE & make hydroxychloroquine available to you and your patients,” the message said. Anderson was disturbed. Despite Trump’s claims that hydroxychloroquine could be among “the biggest game changers in the history of medicine,” the decades-old drug has no proven effect on COVID-19. Anderson said he responded to the text with the words “You’re idiots” and deleted the message. Wednesday’s text message barrage, aimed at medical professionals across the United States, was executed by the Job Creators Network Foundation - one of two related groups founded and funded by billionaire Trump supporters. They include Home Depot Inc. co-founder Bernie Marcus - who set up the group - and tycoon Philip Anschutz, via his eponymous foundation. Andy Puzder, who was briefly Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, was once also a prominent member of the network. Foundation President Elaine Parker said her group was not necessarily endorsing the treatment. “We are not advocating for use of the drug, only access to the drug for doctors who determine that’s the best course of treatment for their patient,” she said in an email. Dr. Jane Orient, the executive director of the conservative Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and one of the petition’s signatories, said that, so long as drugs did no harm, doctors should be allowed to prescribe them based on nothing more than anecdotal evidence. “If it’s safe and might be effective, if I’m the doctor or if I’m the patient, I want to try it,” Orient said. Thomas McGarity, a professor of administrative law at the University of Texas, said the text message campaign was part of a longstanding effort by some on the political right to neuter the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and put more decision-making power into the hands of patients and doctors that drug companies could pitch to directly. McGarity said their philosophy was, “the market can handle this - we don’t need an FDA to be getting in the way.”  Anderson, the New Hampshire doctor, said he found the idea of enlisting physicians in a deregulatory crusade unnerving, especially amid the current coronavirus outbreak. “I’m all for capitalism, but this is not the time” for such a push, he said. Claim: U.S. group bombards doctors with coronavirus petition to cut 'red tape'.

SOLUTION:
Dr. Eric Anderson had just finished vacuuming his New Hampshire home early on Wednesday when the phone in his pocket buzzed with an unusual text message.