TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph and a claim, classify it this way: If the claim contradicts the evidence present in the paragraph, classify the claim as '0'. If the claim has multiple supporting *AND* contradicting evidences, classify the claim as '1'. If the claim has supporting evidence and the paragraph is in overall favor of the claim, then classify the claim as '2'.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: "During a Senate appropriations Feb. 25 subcommittee hearing, Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, said the U.S. flu mortality rate was about the same as the current estimated global mortality rate of the coronavirus outbreak. He made this statement during an exchange with Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) regarding what the acting secretary knew about the coronavirus, which causes a disease known as COVID-19. This C-SPAN video shows the full discussion between the two. Kennedy first asked what the worldwide mortality rate for coronavirus is, to which Wolf responded, that it was ""under 2%"" but that he would need to check with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to get the actual figure and that ""it changes daily."" The Louisiana senator then asked, ""What's the mortality rate for influenza over, say, the last 10 years in America?"" Wolf answered: ""It's also right around that percentage as well. I don't have that offhand, but it's right around 2% as well."" We asked the Department of Homeland Security where Wolf's figure came from. A DHS spokesperson said in an email, ""As the acting secretary said in his hearing, he did not have that information on hand and refers to Health and Human Services -- the federal agency in charge of the federal government's coronavirus response."" The comparison of coronavirus to flu in terms of mortality rates seemed like an important mechanism to understanding the growing concern about the reach of coronavirus, so we decided to dig deeper to find out if these statistics hold up. We also asked experts to explain what the numbers mean in terms of risk. Digging into mortality rate numbers The CDC directed us to its online influenza resources and referred us to the World Health Organization for more information on coronavirus. Christopher Mores, a global health professor at George Washington University, helped make sense of some of the figures. He calculated the average, 10-year mortality rate for flu using CDC data and found it was 0.1%. That 0.1% rate is frequently cited among experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, called it ""sort of the canonical seasonal influenza mortality figure."" It's important to note, that although this percentage seems like a small number, influenza is responsible for an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 deaths annually. Now, for coronavirus. According to statistics released Feb. 17 by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the mortality rate for coronavirus was 2.3%. That's based on cases reported through Feb. 11 and calculated by dividing the numbers of coronavirus-related deaths at the time (1,023) by the number of the confirmed cases (44,672) of the coronavirus. (These numbers reflect the information available at the time of the secretary's testimony.) But this report has limitations, Mores said, including the vague way Chinese officials are defining who has been infected by the coronavirus. ""We have not been able to understand what precisely has gone on there,"" said Mores. ""They have changed their case definitions multiple times. It's murky what has gone into the case count and who has gone into being counted on cases."" The WHO said in a press conference Monday that in Wuhan, China, the city where the virus first hit, the mortality rate ranged from 2% to 4%. Officials said that in the rest of China, outside of Wuhan, the mortality rate of coronavirus is 0.7%. Mike Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the mortality rate in China has since risen to 0.9%. Right now he doesn't see a similarity in the flu mortality rate and the coronavirus mortality rate. ""We don't have any evidence to that being the case,"" said Osterholm. Mores said U.S. health officials just don't have enough information to know whether the two mortality rates are similar. Understanding this comparison would offer a means to better understand the severity of the coronavirus. It could also help in educating the public about the novel illness. ""Until we can gain our own experience with this virus, it's going to be pretty squishy. So, all the numbers that you have come across here are within the range of possibility,"" he said. ""Absolutely, the hope is we will end up with something similar to the flu, but we just don't know yet."" Multiple experts told us that the number of coronavirus cases not just in China but worldwide has probably been undercounted because many people with the infection do not suffer serious symptoms and may not seek medical treatment. It is possible that only those who have tested positive are being counted as ""confirmed cases."" Until the case definition is expanded, they said, to include people clinicians think may have COVID-19 but who were not tested for it, then the total estimated number of cases will remain lower than the likely reality. But, if the number of cases widens to include those with mild symptoms who have not been tested, then the mortality rate will go down. This is the way mortality rates are calculated for the flu, said Mores. The numbers of flu illnesses and deaths are estimates based not only on positive flu tests, but also on doctors' suspicions and symptomatic diagnosis. One key difference between the flu and the coronavirus illness, Osterholm cautioned, is that, with the flu, the population has a partially built up immunity, whether through receiving flu shots or already having been exposed to the illness. Mores concurred. ""You know, the risk is this: We have a brand-new virus in a completely naive population on Earth, we're all susceptible to it. Everyone is potentially infectable with this virus,"" he said. ""Even with a high transmission rate and the low case fatality rate, that still becomes a massive number of ill and fatal cases."" Our ruling There are two ways to parse out this claim: First, is it true that the average U.S. mortality rate for flu is 2%? That's not true, according to data from the CDC and exchanges with multiple global health experts. On average, the flu mortality rate during the past 10 years has been 0.1%. In addition, Wolf and a DHS spokesperson admitted that the acting secretary did not have the statistics in front of him when he answered questions at the hearing about the mortality rates. Second, is it true the COVID-19 mortality rate is similar to the flu mortality rate? Wolf is also wrong on that account, based on the limited information currently known about the coronavirus. Recent data from the Chinese government set the COVID-19 mortality rate at 2.3%. That's vastly different from the flu's mortality rate of 0.1%. Experts also said that while it's possible the mortality rate from the new virus could come close to the flu's mortality rate eventually if the case definition of coronavirus is expanded -- it's too soon to make that assumption with the limited information available." Claim: The mortality rate for the flu is "right around" that of the new coronavirus: "It's right around 2%."

SOLUTION: 0

PROBLEM: Paragraph: A Facebook post from the family of 32-year-old Pete Frates said he is resting comfortably at Massachusetts General Hospital and that "doctors, medicine, prayers and love continue to help him get stronger." After some news outlets erroneously reported Monday that he had died, Frates responded by posting a 45-second video on Twitter showing him lying in a hospital bed while the song "Alive" by Pearl Jam plays in the background. Frates' family said Sunday that he had returned to the hospital and was "battling this beast ALS like a Superhero." He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2012. The disease weakens muscles and impairs physical functioning. There is no known cure. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge raised more than $220 million when it took off worldwide on social media in 2014. Frates is a native of Beverly, Massachusetts, and played baseball at Boston College. He played professionally in Germany after graduation and in amateur leagues upon his return to the U.S. He received his diagnosis after getting hit on the wrist by a pitch and noticing it wasn't healing properly. Claim: Man who inspired ice bucket challenge is back in hospital.

SOLUTION: 2

PROBLEM: Paragraph: "Global health emergencies understandably stoke fear, panic and wild claims. Exaggerations about Ebola were PolitiFact's 2014 Lie of the Year. And now rumors about Zika, a virus linked to birth defects, are taking the Internet by storm. One of the claims goes something like this: Zika is caused by genetically modified mosquitoes, a testament to what happens when man tampers with nature or a purposefully manufactured weapon for population control. As Snopes and Discover have noted, this idea appears to have originated from a post published Jan. 25 to the subreddit r/conspiracy our first red flag. But since then, the claim has been circulated by media outlets ranging from Infowars and Natural News to the Daily Mail, the Mirror, Russia Today and Fox News. One version can be found in a popular YouTube video entitled: ""Bioweapon! Zika virus is being spread by GMO mosquitos (sic) funded by Gates."" The video explains that British biotechnology company Oxitec engineered genetically modified mosquitoes to fight the spread of dengue fever and other diseases with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Oxitec recently released these mosquitoes in Brazil, ""where we have this explosion of Zika,"" the video says. ""Writing's on the wall, folks."" We wondered if there is any truth to the notion that Zika is being spread by transgenic mosquitoes. In a word, no. Epidemiologists told us the rumor is baseless. The mosquitoes in question wouldn't have been capable of starting the outbreak in 2015, and the geographic correlation offered doesn't hold up. A spokesperson for the World Health Organization said the organization has seen no evidence suggesting that Zika is linked to genetically modified mosquitoes. ""I don't know of any scientific evidence for this rumor, or any obvious way to do this that would be more efficient than natural transmission,"" said Stephen Morse, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University. ""I cannot state more emphatically that I believe this theory to be absolutely untrue,"" said Anna Durbin, a professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University. Let's dissect this claim bit by bit. Not a new disease The claim's first problem is history. Zika didn't suddenly appear after genetically modified mosquitoes were released. The virus was first documented nearly seven decades ago in Uganda and has cropped up many times over the years. On April 18, 1947, researchers studying jungle yellow fever isolated the virus from mosquitoes and named it after the Zika Forest where it was found. Though Zika had never been seen before, ""it had probably lurked chronically in African monkeys, or some other native reservoir, for millennia,"" reports National Geographic. In the next half century, evidence of Zika was found in human fluids in a number of African and Asian countries, but only 14 cases of the human disease were documented. Zika was detected outside of the two continents for the first time in 2007. The small island nation of Yap saw 108 confirmed or probable cases of the disease. The second outbreak of Zika hit French Polynesia, another small island in the Pacific, in 2013. About 11 percent of the population (28,000 cases) were infected. In May 2015, Brazil reported the first cases of Zika infection along with a surge in infants born with microcephaly, a birth defect in which baby's head is abnormally small. There are now an estimated 440,000 to 1.3 million cases in the country and the disease has spread across Latin America. Incapable mosquitoes The claim's second problem is that genetically modified bugs couldn't have been responsible for the 2015 Zika outbreak. Many mosquito species in the Aedes genus (africanus, apicoargenteus, luteocephalus, vitattus, furcifer, albopictus, hensilli and polynesiensis) can transmit the Zika virus, but the main vector is Aedes aegypti. This particular mosquito, common in tropical areas around the world, also spreads yellow fever, dengue fever and chikungunya. To combat dengue fever, Oxitec engineered Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to produce a lethal protein and self-destruct. Females, which bite, are destroyed in the lab while males, which don't bite and thus can't transmit diseases, are released into the wild. They mate with local, non-GM females and the self-destruct gene is passed onto offspring. Oxitec spokesman Matthew Warren told PolitiFact that the mosquitoes typically self-destruct within one to four days, and the gene disappears from the population about 12 weeks after the initial release. ""This means that offspring of the mosquito do not survive,"" said Durbin of Johns Hopkins. ""Therefore, the progeny of these mosquitoes, even if infected with Zika, would not survive to transmit Zika."" Wrong location The claim's third problem is the geographic correlation, which besides not being the same thing as causation doesn't actually match up. The first Brazilian cases of Zika reported in May 2015 were in Camacari, a district in the northeastern state of Bahia that's hundreds of kilometers away from the Oxitec trial sites. The biotech firm released the genetically modified mosquitoes in Juazeiro, which is roughly 490 kilometers from Camacari, and in Jacobina, about 340 kilometers away. It's also very unlikely, if not impossible, that Zika-carrying Oxitec mosquitoes made their way to Camacari. For one, the typical Aedes aegypti mosquito can fly a maximum of 200 meters to 440 meters. For another, the trials took place months and years before the Camacari outbreak (between May 2011 and September 2012 in Juazeiro and in Jacobina between June 2013 and December 2014). So ""even if an Oxitec mosquito 'hitched a lift,' "" it would have died long before, Warren said. Beginning in April 2015, Oxitec did release mosquitoes in Piracicaba, in the southeastern state of Sao Paulo about 2,000 kilometers from Camacari and 1,900 kilometers from the epicenter of the disease in Recife. According to the state's department of health, Sao Paulo has reported only 20 cases of microcephaly as of Jan. 20, 2016 (though there is some suspicion over the official tally) while Piracicaba itself has two confirmed and 12 suspected cases of Zika. Oxitec's true role in Zika's rapid spread Rather than spreading Zika, Oxitec mosquitoes could actually help fight the disease, as NPR, CNN, and the New York Times have noted. The self-destructing bugs have reduced virus-carrying mosquito populations in Brazil, Panama and the Cayman Islands by 80 to 90 percent, according to studies commissioned by the company. (Critics say these results are exaggerated.) Experts said the current explosion of Zika in Brazil is more likely due to the lack of barriers, higher population density, increased mobility and novelty of the disease rather than mutant mosquitos. Whereas the disease was confined by the ocean and small populations in Yap and French Polynesia, Durbin pointed out, Zika could spread through a huge amount of territory and infect way more humans in Brazil. Immunity and resistance to the disease has been documented in Nigeria and Indonesia. But in the Americas, Zika is basically a ""virgin soil epidemic,"" said Morse of Columbia. (So were smallpox to Native American populations in the United States and yellow fever to European colonialists in West Africa.) ""I think it's extremely likely these introductions are inadvertent and not intentional because historically we've seen this kind of thing happen many times,"" Morse said. One final note. The viral image focuses part of its criticism on theBill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation helped fund the genetically modified mosquito program. The foundation also ishelping support PolitiFact's efforts to fact-check claims about global health and development. Gates hasno input over what we fact-checkor the rulings we issue. An Internet rumor propagated in a YouTube video claims that the ""Zika virus is being spread by GMO mosquitos (sic)."" There's no evidence that this is true. The argument offered where the Zika outbreak occurred matches up with where the transformed mosquitoes were released doesn't hold up. What's more, the mosquitoes in question were specifically engineered to self-destruct before they can spread viruses. This claim is both inaccurate and ridiculous." Claim: Bioweapon! Zika virus is being spread by GMO mosquitos (sic)

SOLUTION:
0