TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
PROBLEM: "The protests against stay-at-home orders in some state capitals have drawn comparisons to the 2010 tea party movement, but the idea of protesting such rules amid a pandemic is not just a 21st-century phenomenon. There are parallels to a protest a century ago. ""During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, several influential San Francisco residents including a few physicians formed the Anti-Mask League which objected to wearing masks to prevent the spread of influenza,"" stated an April 22 Facebook post. ""They held meetings of thousands of maskless people. San Francisco was ultimately one of the cities that suffered the most with a high death rate."" (The ""Spanish flu"" is a misnomer — it’s more accurate to refer to it as the flu pandemic of 1918.) The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The post includes a black-and-white photo of policemen wearing masks over their mouths and noses. We did a reverse Google search and found the image matches a photo of policemen in a different city — Seattle — wearing masks in 1918. But there are accurate statements in the text, which draws from a source at the University of Michigan. We found that there was such a thing as the Anti-Mask League in San Francisco in January 1919. The city did have one of the highest death rates from the flu, but the authors said they can’t prove whether the Anti-Mask League played a role. Mak pulled from an essay by J. Alexander Navarro at the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, a book by Alfred W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic and the San Francisco Chronicle archives. As the number of flu cases rose in October 1918 in San Francisco, the city passed an ordinance requiring everyone to wear a mask in public except at mealtime. Mask wearing was promoted as a symbol of patriotism. Gov. William Stephens told Californians it was a ""patriotic duty for every American citizen"" to wear a mask. City officials and local newspapers reported widespread compliance with the mask order initially, Navarro found. But some resisted the rules, and police arrested 110 people on Oct. 27 for not wearing their masks or for failing to keep them properly adjusted. The majority were fined $5, though some went to jail. In November, with cases declining, the city started to lift restrictions, although it still required masks. People flocked to public venues including theaters and sports arenas. At a boxing match, the city’s mayor and city health officer were photographed not wearing masks, for which they were fined. Later that month, the mayor annulled the ordinance. But new cases quickly emerged, and the mask ordinance was reinstated in January. Opponents formed the Anti-Mask League, multiple news articles in January 1919 show. Crosby wrote in his book that the league consisted of ""public-spirited citizens, physicians and fanatics."" At a meeting of the Anti-Mask League ""resolutions were passed denouncing the mask ordinance as contrary to the desires of the majority of the people,"" the San Francisco Examiner reported. Nearly 2,000 people attended. The league got their wish, and the mask rule was rescinded Feb. 1. Navarro and colleagues studied how 43 cities fared during the 1918 pandemic and published their results in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They found that many cities experienced second waves after ending social distancing. San Francisco had one of the higher excess-death rates: 673 per 100,000 people. ""It is impossible to say for certainty that the advent of the Anti-Mask League played a role in that outcome,"" Navarro told PolitiFact ""Undoubtedly, having over 2,000 people gather would have helped continue to spread influenza."" The main factors in San Francisco’s outcome, however, were failure to implement interventions such as social distancing quickly and failure to keep them in place long enough. Navarro said he didn’t find something similar to the Anti-Mask League in other cities. Only a few other cities implemented mandatory face mask orders, while others recommended that the public use masks. A Facebook post said during the 1918 flu pandemic, San Francisco residents formed an ""Anti-Mask League."" San Francisco ""was ultimately one of the cities that suffered the most with a high death rate."" Residents angry about the reinstatement of a mask order did form the Anti-Mask League in January 1919. It appeared to be short-lived, as the mask rule was quickly rescinded. Researchers found that San Francisco did have one of the higher death rates in the country, but it is impossible to say whether that was directly related to the mask protests. A photo of masked police officers that accompanies the post is real, but it shows officers in Seattle."

SOLUTION: During the 1918 flu pandemic, San Francisco residents formed the “Anti-Mask League.” San Francisco “was ultimately one of the cities that suffered the most with a high death rate.”

PROBLEM: People in Mexico’s massive capital city may have to return to those old ways starting Wednesday, when a new law takes effect banning the plastic bags that became ubiquitous over the last 30 years. Some say they are ready and willing, and grocery stores are promising to promote reusable synthetic fiber bags, but others are struggling to get their minds around how the ban will work in practice. “We have a very rich history in ways to wrap things,” said Claudia Hernández, the city’s director of environmental awareness. “We are finding that people are returning to baskets, to cucuruchos,” she said, referring to cone-shaped rolls of paper once used to wrap loose bulk goods like nuts, chips or seeds. Some Mexico City residents still use traditional ayate bags, or tortilla towels or baskets, and many — especially the elderly — pull two-wheeled, folding shopping baskets through grocery stores. Some merchants still use old sardine cans to measure out bulk goods. Under the new law, grocery stores will be fined if they give out plastic bags. Most will offer reusable shopping bags made of thick plastic fiber, usually selling them for around 75 cents. “They are not giving them away, they are selling them, and that is what I don’t agree with,” said city subway worker Ernesto Gallardo Chávez, who wonders what will happen if he goes grocery shopping after Jan. 1 and forgets to bring his reusable bags. “Just imagine, I forget my bag and I buy a lot of stuff,” said Gallardo Chávez. “How do I carry it all, if they don’t give you bags anymore?” Like most city residents, Gallardo Chávez thinks protecting the environment is “very good.” But plastic bags in Mexico City are almost never really single-use: most city residents have bought garbage cans and waste paper baskets just the right size to be lined with supermarket bags. And the bags are commonly used to clean up after dogs on sidewalks. “We use the bags for garbage, to separate it into organic and inorganic, and then take it out to the garbage truck,” he notes. Hernández, the environment official, said people should get out of the habit of putting their garbage in plastic bags. “They can take it out (to the garbage truck) directly in garbage cans.”   But that is complicated given the city’s stubborn water shortages. It’s all very well to tell city residents not to line their trash cans with plastic bags, but washing out a kitchen receptacle every couple of days after use because it doesn’t have a plastic liner will takes its toll on water supplies. Not to mention the widespread habit of tossing used toilet paper into wastepaper baskets to spare the strain on many homes’ aged and insufficient plumbing. Used toilet paper is not the kind of thing you can turn over loose to the trash collector. Data analysis specialist Daniel Loredo says he is planning to hoard his last remaining plastic shopping bags precisely for that purpose. But he and his roommates have already taken steps to build up a supply of reusable bags and make sure whoever goes to the grocery store is carrying a few. But for poorer city residents, forgetting to do so even one day could carry a high price in a country where the 75-cent reusable bag costs the equivalent of an hour’s worth of the minimum wage. “I think this will be a challenge, because these bags represent an additional cost, and maybe not everyone can bear that cost quite as easily,” Loredo said. Aldimir Torres, the leader of the country’s Plastic Industry Chamber, called the new law “cheap populism,” noting that it was drawn up without having clear guidelines about what kind of “compostable” bags would still be allowed. The law leaves the door open to using plastic bags ”for reasons of hygiene,” presumably for items like deli meats or cheese. It also allows for bags that biodegrade very quickly, but sets no specific standards for them. “This was a law that was copied and put together in a rush, without consulting people who really know about this issue,” Torres said. Hernández acknowledged there was still a lot of work to be done on alternatives. For example, Mexico City’s ubiquitous street food stalls often use plastic bags to temporarily cover plastic plates, in areas where they have no taps or sinks to wash each plate after use. While that might seem to be covered under the “hygiene” clause of the new law, Hernandez said somewhat ingeniously that “this could be solved by some device to wash the plates.”  The law, she claimed, had to be rushed into effect. “I don’t know why, but sometimes we need a little more pressure in order to take action,” Hernández said, noting the bag ban “is an invitation, a provocation to rethink they way we consume”. Loredo thinks the law may be imperfect, but worth it. “I think that in some way this is a responsible strategy, to introduce us to some more appropriate method of consumption,” he said. “In the end, they (plastic bags) are something that pollute and hurt the environment.” By 2021, the same law will ban handing out plastic straws, spoons, coffee capsules and other single-use items. ″

SOLUTION: Mexico City plastic bag ban to take residents back in time.

PROBLEM: The outbreak comes ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday in late January, when many of China’s 1.4 billion people will be travelling to their home towns or abroad. The World Health Organization and Chinese authorities are taking steps to ensure the disease does not spread further. Thai health authorities said on Wednesday they were stepping up monitoring of passengers arriving at airports with infrared thermal scanners ahead of the holiday, when 800,000 Chinese tourists are expected to visit the country. Memories remain fresh in Asia of a 2002-2003 outbreak of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which emerged in China and killed nearly 800 people worldwide. WHO has said there may have been limited human-to-human transmission of the new coronavirus in China within families. And authorities in Wuhan confirmed on Wednesday that a married couple were among 41 people diagnosed with pneumonia believed to be caused by the new virus. There were no new cases or deaths at the end of Tuesday, the city’s health authority said. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission did not say in the statement whether the couple represented an instance of human-to-human transmission. But it said the husband, who worked at a seafood market suspected of being at the epicentre of the outbreak, was the first to fall ill and that his wife did not have any exposure to the market. Some of the other people diagnosed also denied visiting the market, the commission said. The authorities in Wuhan also confirmed that a Chinese woman quarantined in Thailand, the first case of the mystery strain of coronavirus to be detected outside of China, had come from Wuhan. The State Department’s notice referred to an alert by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urging citizens in China travelling to Wuhan to avoid contact with animals, animal markets or animal products, among other precautions. It also asked citizens those who had visited Wuhan and feel sick to seek medical care. The Wuhan health commission said in another statement issued late Wednesday that 7 of the 41 pneumonia patients have been released. The statement also said that 450 of the 763 people put under observation due to their close contact with known patients have been released.

SOLUTION:
U.S. warns citizens in China about pneumonia outbreak.