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: "Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and his allies, challenged the president’s top health official recently on the administration’s handling of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak. Dobbs criticized Health and Human Secretary Alex Azar over a lack of transparency in the agency’s handling of COVID-19, which has infected nearly 91,000 people globally across 73 countries and led to more than nine American deaths. ""There’s a better ratio of testing for the coronavirus in other countries than we maintain here,"" Dobbs said during the March 2 interview on his TV show. ""We’re actually screening fewer people because we don’t have appropriate testing."" Azar countered that the Trump administration has taken recent steps to roll back regulations and increase the availability of diagnostic test kits to ""hundreds and thousands and millions."" The United States is set to significantly expand its testing capabilities in the coming days and weeks, but Dobbs is correct that the country has lagged behind other nations so far. ""It is true that diagnostic capacity in the U.S. has been lower than in some other countries, but that is changing,"" said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. It’s hard to pinpoint how many people have been tested for the coronavirus, both in the U.S. and around the world. The World Health Organization doesn’t track the number of tests administered in each country, and the numbers that are available are constantly updating. In a statement to PolitiFact, a Fox News spokesperson representing Dobbs cited data from the WorldOMeter, a real-time tool that ""shows estimated current numbers based on statistics and projections from the most reputable official organizations,"" according to its website. Using estimates derived from official government sources, the WorldOMeter says at least eight countries — South Korea, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Finland, Vietnam and Turkey — have given more tests relative to the size of their populations than the United States. That lines up with experts’ analyses and with what multiple news outlets have reported. Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said South Korea ""has screened at least thousands, and Guangdong, China, has screened at least hundreds of thousands,"" citing a WHO report on the outbreak in China, where the virus was first detected. South Korea ramped up testing by building drive-thru screening clinics for speedy assessments, according to local reports. Other countries, like Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Italy have also conducted thousands of diagnostic tests. ""We have done nothing like what other countries have done,"" Lipsitch said, noting that the U.S. had, until recently, limited not only the number of labs that were allowed to conduct tests on suspected cases, but also the number of patients that were eligible to be screened. It’s difficult to say just how far behind the U.S. has fallen, due to the murkiness around the number of administered tests. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped releasing a public count of tests on March 2. The administration’s public statements haven’t cleared it up. On Feb. 29, the CDC reported testing 472 Americans. A day later, Azar told ABC News the U.S. had tested over 3,600 people. And a spokesperson for HHS, Azar’s agency, told us on March 3 that the CDC had tested samples from more than 1,200 patients. ""I don't know how to track U.S. tests any more,"" Lipsitch said. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar speaks at the White House about the coronavirus on Feb. 28, 2020, in Washington. (AP/Vucci) The CDC stopped posting testing data as more state and local public-health labs have been brought into the fold, said Nancy Messonnier, a top CDC official, said during a March 3 briefing. ""With more and more testing done at states, these numbers would not be representative of the testing being done nationally,"" she said. An HHS spokesperson told us that the department doesn’t know how many additional tests have been administered by those state and local labs, adding that those labs can now test up to 15,000 people and are expected to be able to test as many as 75,000 people by March 6. The U.S. test count should rise into the millions as IDT, a commercial manufacturer, and other commercial and academic labs begin producing their own tests soon, according to HHS. The government’s initial testing effort was hindered by flaws with the CDC’s early test kits and restrictions that had limited which labs could run the tests and which patients could be tested. When the first U.S. coronavirus was detected, the country brushed aside the WHO test used by other nations and leaned on the CDC to develop and mass produce a more complicated test capable of detecting other viruses in addition to the coronavirus, according to reports. The test kits went out in early February. But some state labs that received them reported that flaws in the tests were triggering inconclusive results. Those states had to ship samples out to the CDC’s offices in Atlanta for results until the CDC fixed the problem weeks later. Since then, the Food and Drug Administration has given labs and hospitals across the country the go-ahead to administer their own tests before the FDA finishes reviewing them, so long as those tests are proven to work. That should lead to more testing, experts said. The CDC also modified its screening criteria to expand testing for some people with severe respiratory symptoms who did not travel to China or come into known contact with a coronavirus patient. Previously, travel to China or exposure to the virus were preconditions for screening. Adequate testing is essential to getting an accurate count of U.S. cases, experts said. Testing is also key for treating patients and identifying people who might be infected but don’t show symptoms, said Richard Watanabe, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California. ""The latest data suggests the incubation period for COVID-19 can be as long as a couple of weeks,"" Watanabe said. Despite the recent acceleration, Lipsitch said U.S. testing is happening ""very slowly and at a level that is still paltry"" compared with some other countries. Dobbs said that the United States is ""actually screening fewer people (for the coronavirus than other countries) because we don’t have appropriate testing."" Experts told us that to date, the United States has lagged behind other countries, though numbers are imprecise. An error with the CDC’s early test kits contributed to the United States’ relatively low screening numbers. The administration has taken steps to make testing more widely available. With that additional information." Claim: The United States is “actually screening fewer people (for the coronavirus than other countries) because we don't have appropriate testing.
The CDC has stopped publicly reporting the number of tests it’s administered. So far, the United States has lagged behind other nations in terms of coronavirus testing. It has recently taken steps to ramp up its testing capabilities. Until recently, the U.S. had insisted that only the CDC’s test could be used — despite flaws in some early kits — and that only certain patients could get tested.

Paragraph: You need the right mix of factors to create ground-level ozone: sunlight, snow cover, little to no wind and, of course, emissions from the oil and gas industry — which arrived in force more than a decade ago in the Jonah and Pinedale gas field. And this year the factors have been right more often than usual. Friday was the 12th ozone action day of the season — a warning system from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality that forces industry to pull back when conditions for ozone are expected. It’s a record number for recent years, and action days were issued for Saturday and Sunday as well. But there’s something more troubling in the case of the Boulder area: ground-level ozone is regularly forming despite precautions. Breathing it in can cause a variety of health problems, from chest pain to reduced lung function. For reasons still unclear to state regulators, in one corner of the Upper Green, the rules and regulations that reversed an air quality crisis more than a decade ago haven’t been enough, the Casper Star-Tribune reported . “We don’t have all the answers, yet,” Keith Guille, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Quality, said. “It’s definitely not being ignored. We understand that the public is concerned, as we are.” ___ The Upper Green River Basin is a bowl-shaped area wedged between the Wind River and Wyoming ranges. That landscape holds bad air in place when there is no wind. Snowy and sunny years are worse for ozone action days, as was the case in 2017, the last year that ozone action days were a regular occurrence. There was nearly three times the amount of precipitation during the 2017 winter ozone season compared to historical averages, according to a fact sheet from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. But the controllable factor, and the one that once precipitated the great ground level ozone crisis in the basin, is oil and gas. More than a decade ago, oil and gas activity degraded air quality to the point it was comparable to Los Angeles, and it changed the way Wyoming regulated industry in the basin, its pipes and compressor stations, trucks and holding tanks. Those regulations have been effective in driving down emissions. The rules are some of the strongest in the country and have inspired attempts by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Bureau of Land Management to institute similar rules across federal and Native American land — though in both cases the Trump administration has recently pulled back on some of those standards. In addition to the ozone action days, Upper Green rules cover the use of equipment to track leaks and regular checks of infrastructure for damage. And during ozone season, in late winter and early spring, action days are an important part of how the Upper Green manages emissions. In the mix of ozone contributing factors, oil and gas emissions are the one thing regulators can pull back to try and keep ozone at bay. Action days are declared by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality as having the potential to create ground-level ozone. Operators in the Upper Green respond by following contingency plans to reduce emissions, such as reducing refueling and cutting truck idling. This year industry has had to scale back over and over. ___ Jonah Energy, which operates in a different area of the basin from where the Boulder exceedances have been happening, has scaled back its operations considerably due to action days this year, said Paul Ulrich, spokesman for the oil and gas firm. “Small stuff. We’re turning off air heaters on pads during the day. Big stuff, shutting down workover rigs,” Ulrich said. “Those have immediate production, operational and financial impacts that we are bearing.” Jonah has demobilized its completion crew — holding off on finishing wells and bringing them online until mid-April and it is delaying blowing down wells, he said. “I will tell you though, we plan for it. We train for it and we understand that we have an obligation to do everything we possibly can,” Ulrich added. The outcome of those actions is evidenced in the lack of ozone exceedances, over an eight-hour period, this year near Jonah’s operations, he said. But the rules and practices of today may not be enough, if ozone is still forming in the Upper Green, according to the DEQ. “In 2019, we feel whether or not you have a snow pack or not, we don’t want to see those levels above the standard,” said Guille, of the Department of Environmental Quality. Nancy Vehr, administrator of the Air Quality Division of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, said she began reaching out to operators in the Boulder area, where more than 30 companies — mostly oil and gas firms — work, when the ozone spike began about two weeks ago. She asked them to find more ways to voluntarily cut emissions. And they did. But what’s been unique about the Boulder problem this year is that the elevated ozone levels have been persistent, Vehr noted. “We’ve never had an eight-day stretch in one location,” she said. But that area has been a problem in the past. Whether it’s temperature or other factors, the Boulder monitor often picks up more air quality concerns than others across the basin, she said. Ulrich of Jonah said the ozone spikes of this year are a mystery, but it does appear to be isolated and not reflected across the basin, he explained. “The challenge for this particular season is it’s been one monitoring station,” he said. “From a scientific standpoint, that’s a very new challenge for us all, to fully understand between operators and DEQ and others what’s going on at that station.” Everyone is going to have to come back to the table, Ulrich said. “We know we need to take a hard look at it after this year,” he said. Vehr echoed that confidence in current rules, noting that it would be easier to look back over the data in retrospect and analyze patterns. When air quality was at its worst in the Upper Green, you could see it like an orange haze, said Bousman of Boulder. Despite the exceedances this year, the rancher said he hadn’t noticed the air quality being any different. Like everyone else, he wondered what was going on at the Boulder monitor, whether it was working properly and how much of the ozone problem was natural. There is deeper snow up that way, he said. Still, the spikes in safe levels had caught everyone’s attention in the Upper Green, even though they’ve been addressing ozone since 2005 or 2006. “I think, collectively, we thought we were on top of it, so to speak,” Bousman said. “Now, I’m not so sure.” ___ Information from: Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, http://www.trib.com Claim: Wyoming ozone levels puzzle officials.
Joel Bousman wasn’t sure if ozone would be a problem Friday, despite a warning from the state. The snow covered the sage brush and the wind was less than 10 miles per hour — both bad signs. On the other hand, it had been overcast most of the day at the Sublette County commissioner’s ranch near Boulder — a small community about 12 miles southeast of Pinedale, within view of the Wind River Mountains.

Paragraph: “This is our freedom on the line,” Haley said. “If they make it Schedule I, technically they’ll be treating it the same as heroin. And that could have me locked up in jail for life.” Less than a week after the DEA’s notice of intent to temporarily place kratom — a product made from the leaves of a southeast Asian tree — on the most restrictive tier of the Controlled Substances Act, the State Department of Environmental Health was at Rocky Mountain Kratom’s door. Haley’s supply was put on a hold order. As a result, his business, which is one of the only kratom storefronts in the nation, was forced to close shop that same day, reported Colorado Public Radio (http://bit.ly/2cUmD3r). “Given the fact that (the DEA) is framing this as pressing public health concern, and given our roles and responsibilities here as a local public health authority, we felt that it was our responsibility to address kratom products in the Denver markets,” said Danica Lee, the director of public health inspections division for the DEH in Denver. Holds have now been placed on the kratom stock of 15 Denver stores. The DEA says the reason behind the emergency scheduling is due to signs that kratom abuse is on the rise. The dried leaves are most commonly crushed into a powder, which can then be mixed with other liquids and drunk. It can also be brewed as a tea, or swallowed in capsule form. Across the U.S. there were 15 kratom-related deaths between 2014 and 2016, including one in Colorado. The Centers for Disease Control reports receiving 660 calls related to kratom exposure between 2010 and 2015. Dr. Jeffrey Brent, a distinguished clinical professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, says those numbers don’t seem overly concerning. “Frankly, if they were unambiguous kratom-caused deaths, I’d be a little bit more concerned than these kind of mixed drug overdoses, or mix-drug usage where kratom might not have even been a particularity big player,” Brent said. “And it can be very hard to sort out with people with multiple substances.” He adds that the anecdotal accounts of users, who say it’s helpful for chronic pain management, overcoming depression and anxiety, and even weaning off opioids and alcohol, are just that — not necessarily reliable, since little research has been done. For comparison, the National Center for Health Statistics reports 18,893 deaths from opioid pain relievers in 2014 alone. ″(Kratom) is quite weak though, it doesn’t cause a huge number of problems in most people,” Brent said. “But like anything else, all exposures to anything no matter what we’re talking about is dose-dependent. And if you take enough, anything can make you sick and certainly that is true of kratom.” The DEA’s announcement to officially ban kratom has not been made. Barbara Carreno, a spokesperson with the DEA, acknowledged the hundreds of calls and comments coming from users, adding that the response has been unexpected. The outcry from the community includes a letter from Congress, with the signatures of 51 representatives  ? including 22 Republicans ? addressed to acting DEA administrator Chuck Rosenberg and asking the federal government to delay the scheduling of kratom until further research can be done. Colorado Democratic Rep. Jared Polis helped compose the letter. “It is absolutely ridiculous,” Polis said. “The DEA to add kratom to Schedule I, along with marijuana, and say that both of them need to be controlled even more than opioids is ridiculous —  when opioids are the devastating health crisis that so many families have faced and is causing so many deaths.” He adds that banning kratom could make the opioid crisis worse, and that this decision would be “counterproductive.” “I really worry that if it’s allowed to go to Schedule I, some of those people might turn to opioids or harder drugs,” Polis said. The letter was sent to the DEA on Sept. 28 and Congress has not yet received a response. But the DEA’s silence doesn’t mean there is any change in plans to ban kratom. It simply means it hasn’t happened yet. Until they make the formal announcement, kratom remains legal. Where does that leave Rocky Mountain Kratom? According to Danica Lee with the Department of Environmental Health, most likely right where they are now. “If there was a change in the decision, we would certainly want to evaluate that before making a decision on action,” Lee said. “If the time frame is extended, but the result seems as though it will be the same, we would likely leave those hold orders in place.” For Jeremy Haley, the actions against kratom have only encouraged him to fight for the plant he says saves lives. ‘Kratom Kingpin’ Haley first heard of Kratom while listening to a podcast. The guest of the show briefly mentioned his use of it for pain management. Haley started doing research and tried it for himself, and quickly found his anxiety and depression diminished, along with his cravings for alcohol. “My life has been a 180 since then,” Haley said. “I was working in oil and gas at the time actually, and now I’m advocating for botanicals.” He says it helped him work the 16-hour days in the field, and helped him excel at his job. But in 2012, he was arrested for a DUI after a night of light drinking, and was caught with MDMA ? commonly known as ecstasy ? in his pocket. He lost his job and his right to drive, and moved back to Colorado where he is originally from. “It’s one of my biggest regrets in life, but it did lead me down this road,” Haley said. “And it pushed me towards seriously looking for better ways to live.” He continued to use kratom, and he says it kept away the urges to drink while on probation. That’s when he got the idea to start selling it. “I had a feeling inside that people needed to know about this, and I needed to be the one to at least introduce it to people,” he said. “And to counteract the head shops that were selling it at the time, because a lot of the head shops are also giving kratom a bad name.” He applied for his peddler permit, and was allowed to sell kratom on the street. He set up a website and engineered it to be a top result after searching “opioid withdrawal help in Denver.” “I’d walk out there with my big, goofy peddler’s badge, and there’d be such a diverse group of clientele,” Haley said. “There’d be like, soccer moms and the elderly. I was really shocked by it actually at first. I kind of had my own personal stigma and idea of what kratom users, what the demographic would be.” He admits he looked sketchy, with his brown paper bags and meeting people on corners. But he had to start somewhere. “People were coming to me desperate, in really really rough situations. It was the only way I could figure out to make it work,” Haley said. He was even the subject of an undercover investigation by CBS4, and called a “street dealer.” He was worried what his probation officer might think. “It was just kind of me flying solo there for a bit,” Haley said. “Which was a really cool experience, because it really let me dive in deep and meet a lot of the people and learn their stories and learn how much it’s changed their lives in so many different ways and for so many different conditions, from multiple sclerosis to lupus, you can go on and on.” He continued selling this way for two years when he eventually saved up enough to rent out a space on Broadway. “Things would start looking good, and then you would tell people what you’re selling, Kratom, and then they’d Google it, and that CBS story would come up: ‘Denver Street Dealer.’ And then before you know it, no return phone calls or messages,” he said. But after a year and a half, business was pouring in. “We were about ready to blow up,” Haley said. “We were on the verge of becoming a major business and opening many shops. Especially getting into wholesale was a huge goal of mine, and getting our product as accessible as possible in as many outlets as possible across the country for people to use it.” He said it probably would have taken off even faster if it wasn’t for the legal troubles his business has encountered. “We were on the brink of getting shut down, and that’s with amazing profits,” Haley said. “The profits didn’t have anything to do with it. It’s all the other loopholes, it really felt like playing some weird, twisted game.” Banks would close down his accounts because of what he was selling, and his product started being seized at customs after the FDA put out a notice saying that kratom was a substance of concern. “The customs agencies felt like they needed to take some sort of action, in order to enforce that,” Haley said “And they seized hundreds of kilograms from several different vendors, not just us. And it’s just thousands of dollars down the drain.” Haley had to get creative to keep the kratom coming in; he switched over to a Chinese shipping carrier, and had a lab perform tests on his product before it entered the U.S., to guarantee purity for the FDA. And all of it was labeled “not for human consumption,” something Haley had been doing since he started his business. “It’s pretty unfair, and it’s always felt very gross having to put those disclaimers on there,” Haley said. “Because we obviously all know the deal. We were making like, kratom candles even. Just so we could keep our customers, you know, provide them the relief that they need. Because we’ve had so many that have been depending on this stuff.” He says that with all the troubles he’d already experienced, that he knew the DEA’s announcement was inevitable. “I just didn’t expect it to be this soon, or to happen the way that it did,” Haley said. He now sits in his yet-to-be-open shop on Broadway and Alameda, called Artisans Apothecary. It will focus on natural foods and supplements, and was supposed to be his new spot to sell kratom. It was scheduled to be up and running by Sept. 26, but he and his staff decided to focus their efforts on stopping the ban instead. They flew to Washington to join the protest march on the capital Sept. 13, and they were inspired to put together their own event at the Denver capitol building. About 100 supporters showed up on Sept. 23, holding handmade signs, shouting “Kratom saves lives” and sharing their stories. Many of the speakers at the event were customers of Haley’s, including Jason Delapp ? a veteran from Colorado who was diagnosed with MS in 2005. Delapp found kratom and Haley after suffering from opioid dependency for 10 years. “My wife and I had lost a daughter, 9 years ago,” Delapp said. “After that, we both used that pain even more than just physical pain and really abused prescription opiates.” He admitted that when it was tough to get the pills, it was easier to get meth and heroine, and he did both. “That was probably self-esteem wise, the lowest point of my life ever,” Delapp said. “I drank when I was younger a little bit, teenager stuff. But I never did drugs. That wasn’t me.” He says his wife got tired of their addiction, and found kratom as an option during her search for help. Delapp says he immediately saw a difference in her, and it convinced him to start using kratom himself. He’s now entirely off his medications. ″(Kratom) enables me to be in a good mood, and to think clearly, and to make good decisions with my MS to where I know if I’ve done too much,” Delapp said. “The energy and mood alone makes it possible for me to be part of my family’s life again, and I can remember it.” It’s people like Delapp that keeps Haley in the fight. “I pray that we can all ban together and make our voices heard,” Haley said. “Even if it does get outlawed or made Schedule I, that we keep harping on (the DEA) and we do it the right way. Not angry phone calls or letters, or trying to tear anybody down. Because these guys are just trying to do their jobs too and most of them are good guys. But we really need to make it heard that we’re united, as a people. And we’re not going to let our personal freedoms get taken away unless there’s valid explanation at least for why they’re doing this, and they have yet to do that so far.” ___ Information from: KCFR-FM, http://www.cpr.org/news Claim: Business owner ready to fight looming federal ban on Kratom.

Jeremy Haley, a Denver business owner and entrepreneur, received a notice from the Drug Enforcement Administration on Aug. 30 that the natural substance he had been selling for nearly 5 years — first out of his home, then out of his storefront — would soon be considered more dangerous than methamphetamine.