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: Officials went ahead with the parade despite the discouragement of the city health department about the ever-spreading virus. Within 72 hours of the parade, all the hospital beds in Philadelphia were full of flu patients. Within six weeks, more than 12,000 people died — a death every five minutes — and 20,000 had died within six months. Despite the human toll, there has been no memorial or public remembrance of flu victims in the city. Until now. The Mutter Museum, known for its collection of organs preserved in jars, deformed skeletons and wax casts of medical maladies, is launching new permanent exhibit on the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in Philadelphia. “Spit Spreads Death” will open on Oct. 17, and will feature interactives mapping the pandemic, artifacts, images and personal stories. “It’s still referred to by some historians as the forgotten pandemic, because how many Americans are conscious of it today?” said Robert Hicks, the museum’s director. The exhibit takes its name from health department signs that popped up around the city as the pandemic spread. Ahead of the exhibit’s launch, the museum will present a parade Saturday along the same stretch of road where the ill-fated Liberty Loan Parade took place. A sort of moving memorial, the parade will feature about 500 members of the public honoring victims of the pandemic, four illuminated floats and an original piece of music performed by Grammy-winning choir “The Crossing.” “The parade has turned into an interesting commemorative act,” said Matt Adams, co-founder of Blast Theory, the artists’ group creating the parade. Anyone can sign up to participate and can choose the name of an actual flu victim to honor while marching. Marchers will be given a sign with the name of the person they chose and will move along the parade route flanked by the illuminated sculptures. Members of city’s public health community have been urged to join in. “This is all about the process of remembering what the risks are in public health, because that is a crucial way for us to stay safe today,” he said. More U.S. soldiers died from the flu than from battles in Europe during the war. It was called the Spanish flu at the time because Spain was neutral during the conflict and had no restrictions on the press, and could therefore report the outbreak freely, said Nancy Hill, special projects manager at the museum. The general public in much of the U.S. was uninformed about the virus because of the crackdown on news and any speech deemed unpatriotic. Speaking of soldiers dying from the flu fell into that category. About 500 million people, or one-third of the world’s population, became infected with the virus. An estimated 20-50 million died around the world, with about 675,000 flu-related deaths in the United States. Troops moving around the globe in crowded ships and trains helped the deadly virus spread as the war dragged on. The exhibit itself will include interactives that allow people to explore their own neighborhoods to see how the flu hit their street, and even their own homes. Among the most poignant artifacts is a selection of Christmas gifts that a woman named Naomi Whitehead Ellis Ford purchased for friends and family, all fitted with handwritten personal notes to the intended recipients. But they were never handed out, because she passed away from the flu on Oct. 21. Hicks hopes visitors take away a sense of the scope of the pandemic and see how the city came together to help each other, and to be vigilant — getting vaccines, taking common-sense health care measures and staying informed. The museum even threw a health fair in a south Philadelphia neighborhood, offering everything from flu shots to Narcan training. “It is too easy in the United States to forget,” Hicks said. “Cholera, typhus, typhoid fever all mean nothing to most Americans today, but President Lincoln’s son was killed by typhoid fever. From the high and mighty to those whose names aren’t remembered, these diseases were commonplace. The fact that measles is back again is a great reminder: These diseases don’t go away.”

SOLUTION: From parade to pandemic: Museum looks at 1918′s deadly flu.

PROBLEM: Actual occurrences can sometimes take on folkloric lives of their own, making the shift from news stories to cautionary tales through emotional responses to elements of those events. That was the case with the 4 June 1999 death of 12-year-old Catherine “Casey” Fish, who did indeed die while playing the marshmallow-stuffing game known as “Chubby Bunny” — descriptions of her death have become part of the cautionary lore spread among parents. The rules of “Chubby Bunny” require competitors to enunciate that phrase with marshmallows stuffed in their mouths. No swallowing or chewing is allowed, and any participant who gags, coughs, or spits is “out” of the game. The winner is whichever child manages to utter the expression through the largest number of marshmallows. Casey Fish choked on four marshmallows and collapsed during the annual Care Fair held at Hoffman Elementary School, a grade school in Chicago’s North Shore area, and died at the Glenbrook Hospital a few hours later. The “Chubby Bunny” competition was to have been part of the day’s activities and would have been supervised by a teacher. However, Casey began playing the game with some of her friends when her teacher momentarily left the area ten minutes before the scheduled start of the “Chubby Bunny” competition to have a word with a janitor. As Casey choked, the teacher was summoned back to the room, but he arrived too late to head off the youngster’s death. Casey’s death was reported by the media at the time of the incident. But, unlike many news stories about the death of a child, the deceased sixth-grader’s story was told and retold in ensuing months, primarily via The Oprah Winfrey Show, which talked about the case (including airing interviews with the distraught parents) in January, March, and June 2000. The tale of how Casey’s life ended continued to surface in the news as her parents pursued a civil suit against the school district, asserting that a failure to properly supervise the children led to the death of their daughter. (In 2005, her parents settled their lawsuit for $2 million.) All of this additional attention served to keep the story in circulation. The folkloric shift this real-life tragedy has taken involves the mode of death. While a very real youngster did indeed lose her life through playing “Chubby Bunny,” she did so through choking on the intact confections in her mouth, not (as developing lore would have it) via the marshmallows’ somehow breaking down to form a windpipe-clogging glue. In the example quoted above, the bonbons were said to have “emulsified” — that is, turned into a liquid mass. Another Internet-spread description of the death says “The marshmallows were heated in the mouth and throat and effectively turned into a sticky enough substance that it could not be removed by conventional attempts at first aid.” Yet another version claims that “The marshmallows, warming-up to body temperature, took on the form of her air passage, and choked her to death.” We know the marshmallows did not eventually turn into a sticky, fatal mass after Casey held them in her mouth for a while because, during the lawsuit brought by Casey’s parents, Casey’s best friend testified seeing her pal’s lips turn purple just a few seconds after she had put the marshmallows into her mouth. While marshmallows can be quickly melted into a thick liquid, goopy substance in a pot on the stove (as anyone who has made Rice Krispies squares will attest), the temperature inside the human mouth is not sufficient to reduce them to that state. Absent chewing or licking, a marshmallow can be held in one’s mouth approximately 15 minutes before it entirely disappears, its bulk gradually dissolving and being swallowed across the span of that quarter hour. At no point in that process does the resultant fluid become thick or gluey — it is thin, watery, and easily swallowed. The danger presented by the game comes not from the marshmallows being rendered into a suffocating goo in the human mouth by the heat of that environment, but from their bulk. In the zeal to best others, a child may stuff more of the confections into his mouth than he can cope with, potentially lodging one in his throat where it will block his windpipe the way a cork would. It is not any special “melting” property inherent to marshmallows that makes the game hazardous, but rather that the marshmallows take up so much space, and their consistency makes them difficult to remove either via the Heimlich maneuver or with medical instruments. On 13 September 2006, another “Chubby Bunny” death occurred when a 32-year-old Janet Rudd choked on a marshmallow and collapsed while participating in the game at a fair in London, Ontario. Emergency crews were unable to remove the blockage from her throat at the scene; she was taken to a hospital where she was revived, but she died later that evening.

SOLUTION: "A child suffocated while playing a ""Chubby Bunny"" marshmallow-stuffing game.  "

PROBLEM: The giant Asian insect, with a sting that could be fatal to some people, is just now starting to emerge from winter hibernation. “They’re like something out of a monster cartoon with this huge yellow-orange face,” said Susan Cobey, a bee breeder at Washington State University. “It’s a shockingly large hornet,” said Todd Murray, a WSU Extension entomologist and invasive species specialist. “It’s a health hazard, and more importantly, a significant predator of honey bees.” The hornet was sighted for the first time in the U.S. last December, when the state Department of Agriculture verified two reports near Blaine, Washington, close to the Canadian border. It also received two probable, but unconfirmed reports from sites in Custer, Washington, south of Blaine. The hornet can sting through most beekeeper suits, deliver nearly seven times the amount of venom as a honey bee, and sting multiple times, the department said, adding that it ordered special reinforced suits from China. The university said it isn’t known how or where the hornets arrived in North America. It normally lives in the forests and low mountains of eastern and southeast Asia and feeds on large insects, including wasps and bees. It was dubbed the “Murder Hornet” in Japan, where it is known to kill people. The hornet’s life cycle begins in April, when queens emerge from hibernation, feed on plant sap and fruit, and look for underground dens to build their nests. Hornets are most destructive in the late summer and early fall. Like a marauding army, they attack honey bee hives, killing adult bees and devouring larvae and pupae, WSU said. Their stings are big and painful, with a potent neurotoxin. Multiple stings can kill humans, even if they are not allergic, the university said. Farmers depend on honey bees to pollinate many important northwest crops such as apples, blueberries and cherries. With the threat from giant hornets, “beekeepers may be reluctant to bring their hives here,” said Island County Extension scientist Tim Lawrence. An invasive species can dramatically change growing conditions, Murray said, adding that now is the time to deal with the predators. “We need to teach people how to recognize and identify this hornet while populations are small, so that we can eradicate it while we still have a chance,″ Murray said. The state Department of Agriculture will begin trapping queens this spring, with a focus on Whatcom, Skagit, San Juan, and Island counties. Hunting the hornets is no job for ordinary people. “Don’t try to take them out yourself if you see them,” Looney said. “If you get into them, run away, then call us!″

SOLUTION:
‘Murder Hornets,’ with sting that can kill, land in US.