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.

Paragraph: Texas health officials have been offering the vaccinations since Monday, three days after lawmakers were notified that a page had come down with the highly infectious disease. At least two House members and their staffs received vaccinations, and one representative who often takes her 9-month-old to work called her pediatrician to check what precautions she should take. The whooping cough case is being held up as a warning in the Texas House, where politically active vaccination opponents have tried to claim territory. “I know it’s on people’s minds,” said state Rep. Gene Wu, a Democrat from Houston. “People speculate about which members are going to come down with it because they didn’t get vaccinated.” Vaccinations are a recurring fight in statehouses, including in Washington state, where a measles outbreak has lawmakers trying to limit vaccine exemptions. A bill in New York would let minors get vaccinated without parental consent, while a California proposal would give state health officials — instead of local doctors — the power to decide which children can skip vaccinations before attending school. Whooping cough is a bacterial infection also known as pertussis that often starts with what feels like a mild cold, followed by weeks of intense coughing fits. The disease gets its name from the sound some people make at the end of a coughing jag when they gasp for breath. There are about 10,000 to 40,000 cases of pertussis reported each year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control. Forty-seven people in the Texas Capitol received pertussis vaccinations supplied by state health officials Monday and Tuesday, said Lara Anton, a spokeswoman with the Texas Department of State Health Services. She said she could not disclose any details about the person who contracted whooping cough, citing privacy, but House pages are typically children around middle-school age. “It was a large number of people who were potentially exposed,” Anton said. In Texas, the number of schoolchildren claiming vaccine exemptions has surged from about 2,300 students in 2003 to more than 56,000. Some legislation filed this year would make it easier to opt out of vaccines or prevent state health officials from tracking exemption data. On Wednesday, worries over vaccination exemptions in Texas could even creep into a vote over a new $250 billion state budget. A Democrat filed one amendment that would study vaccination levels at child-care facilities. “That a case of pertussis was confirmed on the House floor should be a wake-up call,” said Rekha Lakshmanan, director of advocacy and public policy for The Immunization Partnership, based in Houston. “The fact it happened inside lawmakers’ own house should give everyone a reality check.” ___ Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pauljweber Claim: Whooping cough case at Texas Capitol leads to vaccinations.
Nearly 50 people who work at the Texas Capitol have been vaccinated this week because a page contracted whooping cough, a health scare that comes as legislatures around the country grapple with rising immunization exemptions and recent measles outbreaks.

Paragraph: After a spate of mass shootings in early August 2019 in the United States, gun violence once again became a major topic of political debate in the country, and many expressed their views on potential solutions to the problem. The left-leaning Facebook page Occupy Democrats suggested that tighter gun-ownership regulations could help to reduce levels of firearms-related fatalities. On Aug. 7, the page posted a meme that claimed: “In Massachusetts, to buy a gun you have to take a four-hour gun safety course, get character references from two people, and have a one-on-one interview with a police officer. Oh, and it has the lowest gun death rate in America. Let’s do this everywhere.”    We received inquiries from readers about the accuracy of that two-part claim. On the whole, the Occupy Democrats meme had a high degree of accuracy. Elements of the meme appeared to have been copied from a Facebook post earlier on Aug. 7 by U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass. The meme itself was accompanied by text that read:  “‘Adjusted for age and population, the gun fatality rate in Massachusetts for 2016 was the lowest in the U.S. And that’s how it’s been for most of the last 30 years, although sometimes another state, like Hawaii, which also has very strict gun laws, ends up with a slightly lower rate. '” That text is actually a quotation taken from a May 6, 2018, article published by the Huffington Post, which went on to provide the following disclaimer: “Just how much that low rate has to do with the state’s gun laws is a matter of ongoing debate, even among experts. Pretty much any legitimate study is going to rely on assumptions that will be open to valid criticism; separating out cause and effect can be virtually impossible. But the available research provides a good reason to think Massachusetts laws in general and the permit system in particular have made violence less likely.” This fact check won’t attempt to rule on the validity of any claim that relatively strict gun regulations in Massachusetts are the primary or exclusive cause of that state’s purportedly low rate of firearms-related deaths, merely whether both factors are present there. Massachusetts state law certainly contains comparatively stringent requirements for obtaining and renewing firearms licenses, as well as purchasing and carrying firearms, and the claims made in the Occupy Democrats meme were largely accurate. In Massachusetts, anyone who wishes to purchase or carry a firearm must obtain a firearms license, of which there are two kinds: a license to carry and a firearms identification card (FID), the latter of which relates to rifles and shotguns. Applications for firearms licenses are processed by local police forces, and a 2014 state law gave law-enforcement agencies relatively wide authority and discretion to deny license applications, through a court process, where a license applicant poses a demonstrable risk to public safety. All first-time applicants for a license to carry or an FID must complete a one-day MA Certified Firearms Safety Course or a Basic Hunter Education Course, as part of the application. So the meme’s claim is accurate as regards first-time license applicants, but not for those who already have one, who are not required to undergo training every time they wish to purchase a new gun, for example. Furthermore, all applicants (whether first-time applicants or those applying to renew their firearms license) must provide two character references, as outlined in the state-issued “LTC/FID/Machine gun application,” which can be viewed here. The meme is accurate in this regard. Finally, Massachusetts state law does not oblige a “licensing authority” (typically a police force) to require an in-person interview with license applicants, but many police forces, including the largest in the state, Boston’s, do require such an interview. So that obligation is not prescribed in law, but is a practical necessity for many firearms-license applicants, which partially vindicates the meme’s claim in this regard. This was true in 2016, as the Huffington Post article (which Occupy Democrats indirectly cited as its source) outlined, though not quite accurate in 2017. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks gun deaths (along with many other cause of death) in each state every year. The CDC also calculates gun death rates in each state every year — that is, the number of firearms-related deaths per 100,000 people living in the state, after taking into account and standardizing age distributions across states. In its standard measure of gun deaths, the CDC counts all forms of firearms fatalities including homicides, suicides and accidental discharges. In 2016, Massachusetts had the lowest age-adjusted gun death rate in the country, with 3.4 fatalities per 100,000 people. Rhode Island, New York, Hawaii and Connecticut had the next-lowest death rates, while Alaska, Alabama and Louisiana had the highest rates of gun deaths in the U.S., with 23.3, 21.5 and 21.3 fatalities per 100,000 people, respectively:  Along with New York, Massachusetts had the joint second-lowest gun death rate in 2017, with 3.7 per 100,000 people, behind Hawaii, which had 2.5 such fatalities per 100,000 people:  As the Huffington Post article pointed out, Massachusetts regularly has among the lowest annual rates of gun deaths in the United States. As well as in 2016, it also had the lowest rate in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2009, 2012 and 2015,  The chart below shows the age-adjusted gun death rate of every state, taking into account all gun deaths between 1999 and 2017. Massachusetts had the second-lowest gun death rate over that 19-year period, behind Hawaii. Louisiana, Alaska, the District of Columbia and Mississippi had the highest:  Although the Occupy Democrats Facebook post clearly specified that the basis of the claim in the meme were the figures for 2016, a year in which Massachusetts did indeed have the lowest gun death rate in the country, the meme itself did not make that clear. Taken on its face, the meme was claiming that Massachusetts had the lowest rate of gun deaths in either 2019 (the year in which it was posted) or 2018 (the most recent full year). The state may well ultimately be shown to have the lowest rate of gun deaths in the country during those years, but CDC data for 2019 and 2018 will not be available until 2021 and 2020, respectively. On the whole, the Occupy Democrats meme was highly accurate, though not perfectly so. Claim: Massachusetts has certain strict gun-ownership requirements and the lowest rate of gun deaths in the United States. 
What's true: Massachusetts requires gun-license applicants to provide character references; first-time applicants must complete a one-day safety training course; and many police departments require an in-person interview before approving license applications. Massachusetts regularly has either the lowest or second-lowest rate of gun deaths in the United States. What's false: In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, Massachusetts had the second-lowest rate of gun deaths, but data for 2018 and 2019 are not yet available. The gun-license requirements set out in the meme do not necessarily apply to all applicants.

Paragraph: There is no mention of the costs of Victoza. This would have been easy to include given the drug is widely prescribed and pricing information is freely available on the internet. The article compares the performance of Victoza against rival diabetes drugs, so it would have been informative to have a comparison of costs as well. The story’s key figure, which features in the headline, is a 13% reduction in the risk of heart attack, stroke and cardiovascular death. Unfortunately this figure only measures the relative risk reduction; i.e. the change in risk for patients who got Victoza as a percentage of the actual risk of heart attacks, strokes or cardiovascular death for patients who didn’t get Victoza. However, the story does also give actual risk figures for the treatment and placebo group (13.0% vs. 14.9%). This allows a keen eyed reader to calculate the absolute risk reduction: a less impressive sounding 1.9%. Because of this, the story rates Satisfactory on this criterion. It’s worth nothing the news release didn’t include the placebo group reductions. The story does a good job of mentioning the side effects of Victoza, even pointing towards whether effects were statistically significant. One omission was that the story did not mention the higher incidence of gallstone disease, a side effect that was highlighted as significant in the paper. Although the strength of the evidence is not directly interrogated, the story provides sufficient details about the study, such as trial size, length of trial, and where it was published. Type II diabetes is a major public health problem and, as the story mentions, patients frequently die of heart disease. No disease-mongering here. No third-party scientist is quoted, although the views of one industry analyst are paraphrased. It’s not clear, however, if this analyst was actually interviewed for the story, and his comments pertain only to the market’s expectations for the drug. We didn’t think this was substantive enough to rate as Satisfactory. The story does mention that Novo Nordisk funded the study and the focus is squarely on the pharmaceutical industry, making the company’s role clear to the reader. How Victoza performs in reducing severe cardiovascular events compared to rival drugs is mentioned numerous times. It is worth noting that there was no mention that the drug is given by injection. For individuals with diabetes reading the article, this oversight is important in that it may make them more inclined to oral medicines that are easier to take. The story makes it clear that the drug is already established on the market, calling it “top-selling” in the first line and mentioning that it is typically prescribed as a third or fourth option. The story makes clear that the purpose of this study was to meet FDA requirements. “Since 2008, U.S. regulators have demanded studies for new diabetes medicines to show there is no increase in heart risk, opening a new battleground between different treatments,” it says. The story is not based solely on Novo Nordisk’s news release. As mentioned, some of the relative risk figures which the story leans on, as well as two sources who are quoted, are found in the news release. But the writer clearly conducted independent interviews and sourced information elsewhere. Claim: Novo diabetes drug cuts heart risks by less-than-hoped 13 percentage

The story reports on findings from a clinical trial of Novo Nordisk’s diabetes drug Victoza published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The trial was designed to measure whether Victoza (generic name liraglutide), which is given by injection, was any less likely than standard diabetes care to lead to severe cardiovascular events like heart attacks or strokes in patients with type 2 diabetes. Along with reporting the key outcomes of the trial, the story quotes the lead scientist involved in the study saying that diabetes treatment can begin to move from managing blood sugar levels to managing the disease’s complications. The importance of finding drugs to manage cardiovascular health in diabetes is made clear, and the story does a good job of contextualizing the significance of the results, comparing Victoza’s performance to rival diabetes drugs and highlighting that the results, although positive, were not as impressive as some pharmaceutical industry observers had hoped. The story would have been stronger if it had mentioned the costs of Victoza, and included independent expert commentary, especially to contextualize the lead scientist’s claims that drugs like Victoza may herald a “shift” in how diabetes is managed. Diabetes is one of the most common chronic conditions in the world and its rate is increasing along with higher rates of obesity and an aging population. Treatment of diabetes seeks to modify the risk factors that increase diabetes-associated complications. Though much of the focus of treatment is in lowering blood sugars, decades of evidence suggest that tight sugar control doesn’t decrease important risks such as heart disease, stroke and kidney failure. For this reason, treatments that not only control blood sugar but also have favorable effects on heart disease have been an area of focus. New classes of medicine such as the GLP-1’s, including Victoza that is studied here, have been evaluated to examine their effect on heart disease and heart disease related death. The favorable results of this study are encouraging and will lead to increased use of these medications. Though not mentioned in this article, Victoza is given by daily injection under the skin, similar to insulin, and may decrease interest among people seeking the convenience of oral medications. The high cost of the drug and others like it will be another barrier to more widespread use, which argues for additional studies in lower risk groups in whom more established, less costly and easier to take medications are currently recommended.