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: It’s too bad this story didn’t mention costs. Considering that the trial found only small differences in the effectiveness of the treatments, it seems that cost might be a key deciding factor for many people with neck pain. It’s notable that two educational sessions about home exercise were as effective as 15 chiropractic sessions. The story includes both some of the specific results reported by researchers as well as more conversational descriptions of the overall experiences of people in this trial. Readers get the message that people with neck pain tend to feel better as time passes no matter which treatment option they used and that none of the treatments is clearly superior or can deliver sure-fire pain relief. This rating is a close call. The story does warn readers that spinal manipulation can pose “rare, but serious risks.” Also, none of the trial participants reported a serious adverse event. But the story could have been more specific and reported that, as the editorial accompanying the research article pointed out, “neck manipulation has a rare but potentially catastrophic risk for vertebral artery stroke.” Also, the story should have at least briefly mentioned some of the harms that can be caused by the pain medications (including acetaminophen, narcotics and muscle relaxants) that were prescribed to some participants. This story gives readers the important highlights of the study design and how the researchers measured effectiveness. It also includes a comment from an independent source that the trial would have been better if it had included a no-treatment group (in order to look for improvements that were due simply to the passage of time or a placebo effect). The story could have pointed out that unlike major drug trials that use placebo pills there was no way to prevent patients from knowing which treatment they received, which means the researchers can’t be sure that the reports from patients weren’t partially influenced by their beliefs about how effective a treatment might be. For instance, it could be that people who got spinal manipulation from a professional (and paid for it) might tend to believe that the treatment was more effective than a set of exercises that they did themselves at home. The story accurately reports that neck pain is common. It also includes cautionary statements about the uncertainty that exists about what sort of treatment works best, thus helping readers keep expectations in line with reality. The story includes quotes from multiple independent sources. It reports that funding for this trial was provided by “U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.” It might have been helpful to point out that the center is part of the National Institutes of Health, so that it would be clear to readers that it is a public institution. Although the story does not report on any potential conflicts of interest on the part of the researchers, the article authors did not disclose any conflicts in their journal article. The trial was set up as a direct comparison of popular treatments for neck pain, and that is just how the story presents it. It even includes a comment from an independent source that this sort of neck pain tends to improve on its own. As mentioned above, the story could have provided more details about the potential harms of the various treatment options. It is clear that all of the treatments included in this trial are widely available. The story points out that this trial was designed to address the lack of solid evidence comparing common treatments for back pain, while also noting that this trial doesn’t answer all of the questions. The story does not appear to rely on a news release. Claim: Spinal Manipulation, Home Exercise May Ease Neck Pain
When researchers randomized 272 neck pain patients to receive either spinal manipulation, medication, or instructions on home exercises, they found some differences that were statistically significant. But the big picture is that all the patients tended to get better and those who got manipulation or home exercise instructions fared about the same. And that the bottom line message that readers get from the news story. The story didn’t mention costs and it could have provided more details about potential harms, but overall it gives readers a fair overview of the research and the broader background of neck pain treatment. News reports should always distinguish between study results that really mean something to people dealing with illnesses and those that are merely statistically significant, but clinically underwhelming. This story reports key findings about measured differences, but also helps readers to see the main message; that those differences didn’t make a dramatic difference to how patients felt… and that important questions remain. The study raises some interesting questions. It’s difficult to know if similar results would be seen for patients coming for care in usual practice settings, rather than in response to newspaper and radio ads recruiting subjects. It’s also worth looking at effective care versus efficient care. If two group instructional sessions are as good as 15 individual chiropractic sessions on average, one could surmise that home exercise might provide more bank for the buck. The story could have done a better job driving this point home. AS

Paragraph: In May 2020, a photograph started to circulate on social media supposedly showing a petri dish that was coughed on by a person not wearing a mask and a petri dish coughed on by the same person wearing a mask:  As the Twitter user noted, this image reportedly was taken by lab technician Katie Corley and shared to her public Facebook page. Corley’s original post was shared on May 6 along with a message to the “conspiracy theorists” who were refusing to wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic: Visual experiment for you conspiracy theorists: I coughed on two petri dishes, one while wearing a mask and one not. Shocking! The one on the left with no growth is the one I used a mask for! The one on the right where I didn’t wear a mask is full of bacteria. So yeah, maybe cloth masks don’t give you much protection, but they protect the people around you. Maybe wear one if you insist it’s your constitutional right to eat at Chili’s. We note that many social media users who encountered this photograph made some incorrect assumptions about what it showed. For example, many people seemed to think that the petri dish on the right showed SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus at the center of the current pandemic, and that this photograph demonstrated just how effective masks were at stopping the spread of COVID-19. This photograph, however, simply shows “normal oral flora.”   In an edit to her post, Corley explained that the petri dish on the right contained “normal oral flora,” such as staph species, neisseria species, and corynebacterium. Corley also noted that viruses are much smaller than the bacterium shown in the petri dish, but noted that this small experiment demonstrated how masks can lessen droplet spread that can carry viruses. Corley added: There’s been a lot of questions regarding this experiment, so here’s some answers: 1. I used a cloth mask I made myself with disposable lab coat material. 2. I used blood agar. 3. The plate on the right looks “old” or “stale” because of the growth. Some of the organisms on this plate are alpha hemolytic, meaning they partially hemolyze blood. The agar itself is made with 5% sheep’s blood, so when it’s partially hemolyzed, it turns a dark green color. 4. As for the growth, it’s mostly viridans strep, staph species (not staph aureus), neisseria species, and corynebacterium. Pretty normal oral flora. 5. I realize that viruses are 1,000 times smaller than bacteria. The point of the masks is to prevent droplet spread, which carry bacteria as well as viruses. Corley, of course, was not the first person to notice how face masks lessened droplet transmission. Similar images showing bacteria from a person’s cough growing in a petri dish can also be seen in this article from the Microbiology Society. Rich Davis, the Clinical Microbiology Lab Directory at Providence Sacred Heart, posted a series of images of a similar demonstration: What does a mask do? Blocks respiratory droplets coming from your mouth and throat. Two simple demos: First, I sneezed, sang, talked & coughed toward an agar culture plate with or without a mask. Bacteria colonies show where droplets landed. A mask blocks virtually all of them. pic.twitter.com/ETUD9DFmgU — Rich Davis, PhD, D(ABMM), MLS 🦠🔬🧫 (@richdavisphd) June 26, 2020  Davis, like Corley, emphasized that this was not an experiment showing the efficacy of masks against the spread of COVID-19. Rather, it was a simple demonstration to show how masks lessened the spread of respiratory droplets, which can carry the disease. The British children’s television show “Operation Ouch!” also took a look at how much bacteria gets disseminated when a person coughs. While that episode did not include masks, it did compare a petri dish that was coughed on by a man with no mouth covering and a petri dish that was coughed on by a man who covered his mouth with an elbow. Here’s how the petri dish looked after it was coughed on by the man who covered his mouth (left) and the petri dish coughed on by the man who didn’t (right). As you can see, the results from “Operation Ouch!” are very similar to the results seen in Corley’s post:  Here’s the clip from “Operation Ouch!” (The cough experiment starts around the 50-second mark): A 2005 study published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology noted that more than 700 bacterial species have been detected in the oral cavity. Covering your mouth when you cough (either with an elbow or a mask) can reduce droplet transmission and lessen the spread of potentially harmful germs. Professor Lindsay Grayson, director of infectious diseases at Melbourne’s Austin Hospital, said as much during a presentation at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco in 2009 concerning research on the effectiveness of masks in slowing the spread of influenza. The New York Times reported: “If you’re wearing a mask to prevent yourself from catching it, they’re not so effective,” said Dr. M. Lindsay Grayson, professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne and one of the study’s co-authors. “But if you’re sick with the flu and coughing and sputtering, those masks do prevent you from spraying those bugs everywhere.” The researchers asked nine study subjects with documented cases of influenza type A or B to test two different types of masks — the standard, disposable surgical masks and a more costly, respirator-style mask. The flu patients coughed into a petri dish while wearing both types of mask as well as without the mask. The dish was then tested for the presence of flu virus. When either type of mask was worn, no virus was detected on the petri dish. But how effective are masks in preventing the spread of COVID-19? While the exact efficacy of masks on the spread of COVID-19 is still undetermined, health officials do recommend that people wear masks in public because these face coverings can prevent droplet transmission. Claim: A photograph shows one petri dish that was coughed on by a person not wearing a mask and another petri dish coughed on by the same person wearing a mask. 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told us:

Paragraph: Rukiya Mohamed, a severely malnourished one-year-old girl refugee from Madaitu Village in Somalia, is wrapped in foil at the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) (Doctors Without Borders) clinic at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) transit centre in Dolo Ado near the Ethiopia-Somalia border August 11, 2011. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya Dhobley’s buildings are riddled with bullet holes, the scars of battles earlier this year when Somali troops and fighters from the Ras Kamboni militia, allied to the embattled government, routed Islamist militants from the frontier town. Gunmen draped in ammunition belts ride heavily armed 4x4s, maintaining a jumpy peace. The al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels are now hunkered down just 20 km (12 miles) to the east in the village of Dagalama and 30 km (20 miles) to the south in Hawina. The scene is similar across many parts of southern Somalia where the United Nations declared a famine last month, putting 3.7 million Somalis, the majority of them in southern rebel-controlled regions, at risk of starvation. Abdullahi Abdisalam can only watch as the region’s worst drought in decades decimates his livestock herd and pushes food prices beyond the reach of most, slowly squeezing the life out his small grocery shack. “I had invested everything in those cattle. Most have died, the others are so skinny they’re worthless,” said Abdisalam, running his hand through a large sack of beans. He, however, is among the more fortunate, with a small, albeit ailing, business to fall back on. Dhobley was once a buzzing trading post, the entry point into Kenya, the region’s biggest economy. Now the only people passing through are exhausted families trekking to the world’s biggest refugee camp on the other side of the border. Across Somalia, harvests have failed. Nearly all the food available in Dhobley’s local stores is imported. To bring it to Dhobley from the militant-controlled port of Kismayu, traders are forced to run a gauntlet of road-blocks at which “taxes” are frequently extorted. Many opt to take long detours. The result is the same: higher prices. Mako Mohamud brings in dried grass from the more fertile Juba valley to Dhobley. “Al Shabaab stop us on the road and ask if the grass is to feed cattle in government held areas. I won’t say it’s for Dhobley. I’ll say it’s for Afmadow. That’s not far from here but under their control,” the 32-year-old mother said. Few, however, can afford the fodder. At one of Dhobley’s two boreholes, emaciated cattle, their skin hanging off jutting ribs, trip over the fresh carcass of a calf. Dhobley lies just five km (three miles) from the porous border with Kenya. But it’s one-way traffic across the frontier as tens of thousands of Somalis flee a famine that is tightening its grip on the south of their country. The drought and famine have killed more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 in the last three months in southern Somalia alone, according to U.S. estimates. In a dusty compound on Dhobley’s outskirts, Habiba Mahad Adan swatted flies away from the sunken, cloudy eyes of her severely malnourished four-year-old son, too weak to cry for food. “I’ve received nothing for my child,” Aden said, contemplating the 100 km (60 miles) walk to Kenya’s Dadaab refugee complex after already having trekked for three weeks through the scorched landscape. Even in areas now held by Somali troops and government-friendly militia, the sands shift constantly, deterring aid groups from entering. What is more, the border with Kenya is officially closed, complicating the overland delivery of aid. “We’ve made the place safe. We’ve been telling aid agencies that, but so far we’ve received no emergency intervention,” Abdinassir Serar, a local elder, told a high-level delegation from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). While the humanitarian response to the famine in Somalia has focused on emergency food and shelter handouts, FAO has appealed for $70 million to help Somalis buy food, feed their livestock and stay in the country. Cash in return for work as well as seeds for the next harvest, with rains anticipated in October, might hold back the tide of refugees and cut a growing dependency on aid. “There is no alternative other than providing immediate cash relief to people and at the same time engage immediately to protect their resource base (livestock),” said Luca Alinovi, head of FAO’s Somalia program, in a patch of scrub littered with rotting cattle carcasses. A Somali refugee drives his donkeys at Kobe refugee camp, 60km (37 miles) from Dolo Ado, near the Ethiopia-Somalia border August 11, 2011. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya Still waiting for cash commitments from donors, FAO says $70 million could provide seeds to 750,000 people ahead of the rains, help feed and vaccinate 42 million animals at risk of drought-related diseases and support almost 1 million people in return for work that might jump-start local economies. “It’s very clear, we need to move assistance across the border (into southern Somalia),” Cristina Amaral, FAO’s head of emergency operations, told Reuters. If they do not, then it’s only time before shopkeeper Abdisalam and tens of thousands of others like him contemplate the walk across the border, perhaps never to return. Claim: Famine squeezes life out of southern Somalia.

The semi-arid lands surrounding the frontier town of Dhobley in southern Somalia have become a dust-bowl, the thorny scrub stripped of all vegetation as famine grips the region and an exodus of the starving empties its villages.