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: A member of a small county commission in Florida became an online laughingstock after video spread of him endorsing a widely-debunked cure for COVID-19 (a.k.a. the "coronavirus") by a right-wing "news" outlet to his colleagues.During the March 20 2020 meeting, Okeechobee County commissioner Bryant Culpepper reassured his colleagues that his information was legitimate because he saw it on One America News Network (OAN or OANN), which he described as "the new Fox News.""There's a lot of baloney out there on social media. You've gotta be really careful. But I only brought it up because it came from a pretty reliable source," Culpepper said.According to a story he saw on the channel, he said, an OAN guest claimed that it was possible to beat COVID-19 by training a hair dryer on one's face at a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit. (This is not true. )"In this interview with one of the foremost doctors who has studied the coronavirus, [he] said that the nasal passages and the nasal membranes are the coolest part of the body," Culpepper said. "That's why the virus tends to go there until it then becomes healthy enough to go into the lungs." (This is also not true. )But using the hair dryer, he said, would cause the virus to fall apart. "You hold a blow dryer in front of your face and you inhale with your nose, and it kills all the viruses in your nose," Culpepper claimed, falsely.He also indirectly promoted the "cure" on his own Facebook page, linking to local coverage of the meeting without mentioning that it covered his remarks:The claims that he said OAN and the "foremost doctor" were promoting have been roundly and completely debunked. And in reality, OAN is far from "pretty reliable." In fact, as the media analysis site Media Bias/Fact Check reported in reviewing the California-based channel, it's exactly the opposite:We rate One America News Far right biased based on story selection that consistently favors the Right and Mixed for factual reporting due to promotion of conspiracies, lack of sourcing and a few failed fact checks. OAN is one failed fact check away from moving to the Questionable Source list.The review cited an AdWeek story saying that staff members felt that the channel's billionaire founder, Robert Herring Sr., had become a "de facto news director" who pushed OAN into becoming supportive of United States President Donald Trump's run for office in 2016:According to internal emails, Herring has directed his channel to push Trump's candidacy, scuttle stories about police shootings, encourage antiabortion stories, minimize coverage of Russian aggression, and steer away from the new president's troubles, according to more than a dozen current and former producers, writers and anchors, as well as internal emails from Herring and his top news executives.Besides getting local coverage, Culpepper's attempt to paint the "blow dryer" cure as legitimate was shared on social media:Okeechobee County Commissioner Bryant Culpepper at emergency meeting says you can kill coronavirus by holding a blow dryer up to your nose after he saw it on "reliable source" OANN, warns "there's a lot of baloney out there on social media" #BecauseFlorida pic.twitter.com/n9dGDBQ4WW Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) March 22, 2020According to the Friendly Atheist blog, which covers religious affairs, Culpepper reacted angrily at first to the criticism:No one is holding a gun to your head to do anything you do not want to do but for some they don't have alot [sic] of options. All this wonderful Science you believe in yet Thousands die everyday from Cancer, Lukemia, ALS so why haven't they been cured with all the Scientist working on for years Go ahead laugh all you want and feel like fools when I am proven Right.However, he apologized on his Facebook page on March 22 2020. "I am Heartfully Sorry for comments I made on Social Media," he wrote:I was only trying to give comfort to those in Okeechobee who have no insurance to treat there [sic] families. I should have ignored the comments that I perceived as hateful and the embarrassment I caused to my Fellow Commissioners and our Administrator And [sic] her staff. Iwill not offer anymore suggestions unless they are tried and proven.Given the huge amount of disinformation circulating both on and off social media and the credulity with which certain officials are repeating it,it is probably best to receive health guidance from medical experts, not public figures without expertise who regularly quote ideas from far-right television networks without credibility.

SOLUTION: A member of the Okeechobee County Commission in Florida promoted a claim that using a blow dryer could cure people of COVID-19.

PROBLEM: All 46 schools in the district serving Grand Junction and the surrounding area were closed and won't reopen until after the Thanksgiving break so custodians can disinfect surfaces. Norovirus is a highly contagious bug that causes diarrhea, vomiting and other symptoms, and can spread quickly in public places. It's most common in winter but can be seen any time of year. The outbreak was first seen last week at a high school before spreading to other schools. Officials in the district, the largest in western Colorado with 22,000 students, believe there is now another related strain of the virus that has affected some students who were previously sick. "We are taking this highly unusual action because this virus is extremely contagious and spreading quickly across our schools," district nursing coordinator Tanya Martin said. It's not clear how many students have become sick. Some custodians also became ill, slowing down the cleaning process, but it's unknown if the suspected viruses were to blame. Nicole Comstock, communicable disease deputy branch chief for the state Department of Public Health and Environment, told The Daily Sentinel that there are about 150 to 200 suspected norovirus outbreaks in the state each year. She said most occur at nursing homes but outbreaks at schools are not uncommon. The U.S. Air Force Academy outside Colorado Springs reported that 400 cadets have been sickened by norovirus since October, but the outbreak hasn't disrupted classes. The Gazette reported that infected cadets are kept on bed rest for at least three days after their symptoms disappear before they can be cleared to return to class and training.

SOLUTION: Suspected norovirus outbreak closes 46 Colorado schools.

PROBLEM: The several facets of costs are addressed, including the rationing charge. The story gets a shout out for talking about both sides of this third-rail issue with Avastin. It would have been nice to explain Dr. Sparano's important comment that doctors will still be able to use Avastin for breast cancer for patients who can afford it. It's because insurance companies, including Medicare, tend not to pay for drugs when used for reasons the FDA hasn't approved. So if Avastin does lose its indication for breast cancer, docs can still prescribe it "off-label" for that use, but patients will need to step in and pay for it all. The article meets the standard here by presenting data for progression-free survival and explaining that none of the trials showed a survival benefit for Avastin compared to standard chemo. (The quantity 0 seems implied.) While it's notoriously difficult to explain the ins and outs of cancer studies in such a short space,we nonethless criticize the article on this criterion because, although most of the messages were generally accurate, readers could've benefited from more clarity on one of them and a little help overall in squaring up some potentially contradictory messages. We'll explain in 3 acts. Act I: Story Highlights. One of these summary bullets states that "Subsequent studies showed no greater survival benefit." In isolation this statement may be misleading. It seems they mean it to refer to progression-free survival. But that doesn't jibe with the practical meaning of the term "survival benefit" as actually used in the body of this article: overall survival. And in fact, as we learn, all 4 studies showednosurvival benefit compared to standard chemo. Act II:Dr. Sparano's zinger. In his opposition to the FDA decision, the source notes that one-year survival for Avastin was consistently better in all studies. How is a reader to reconcile that message with the message that survival was not better for Avastin in ANYstudy? What was needed was not just quantification but qualification. Perhaps it would've been as simple as giving us the timeframe for Dr. Woodcock's conclusion that there was no survival benefit in all studies, or more context about Dr. Sparano's point. Without some explanation somewhere, we think Dr. Sparano'sline should not have been quoted, since it's essentially out of context and it somewhat throws the messages up in the air for a reader, perhaps with consequences on the balance of the story. Act III:Mixed messages? The story gives us 2 messages that, taken together, may also seem contradictory for lay readers: 1. Later trials showed that Avastin offers a small increase in progression-free survival compared to standard chemo but still an increase. 2. The 4 studies together shown no survival benefit. How is a non-clinician to make sense of these messages? How can it slow tumor growth and lengthen the time people lived without progression but not lengthen the time people lived? These head-butting messagesmight've been reconciled by clarifying, as the FDA press releasestarts to, how these data show that Avastin's effects on tumor growth were temporary enough that people taking Avastin didn't live any longer,on average. Harms are not quantified, and it would've been very helpful to know how frequently these serious side effects occurred in the trials. Were they exceptionally rare? Utterly rampant? The point of our criterion is that without quantifying the harms, readers can't evaluate the risk/benefit trade-off for themselves. That said, we could almost awardthe story credit on the spirit of this criterion because it gives the serious harms, and their implications in the FDA decision, a solid amount of time in this article. The point from the ACS medical officer that some women "have not only not benefited, they've been harmed," conveys the big picture. However, true to the definition of this criterion, we must grade this as unsatisfactory. The story takes the time to walk us through the complex story of the preliminary study, E2100, that served as the basis for conditional approval, and the ultimate results of the larger trials, producing an implicitly higher-quality evidence base than E2100 alone. The "larger" is a big part of evaluating the evidence. It also discusses ongoing research into tumor subsets that may respond to Avastin. Ideally it would've provided more detail about the 4 studies themselves, such as the numbers of subjects, designs, and lengths of follow-up. While more evidence could've been helpful, we think the evaluation of the larger,more relevantarc is clear, that promising preliminary results from a smaller study were not played out in several bigger studies. The article avoids disease-mongering. If you want to be precise, Avastin is only approved for one type ofmetastatic breast cancer,HER2-negative. There was some room for improvement here. Two independent sources were used: an interview with a cancer doctor and a statement on the ACS website. The story neglected to point out that the former, Joseph Sparano, has served as a consultant and speakeron Avastinfor Genentech, as WebMD acknowledged when they interviewed him for their story. See "Quantifying Benefits" for our request for more information about Dr. Sparano's quote regarding 1-year survival. On a side note, it may have balanced Dr. Sparano's quote had the story included a little more of the ACS statement that spoke directly to the FDA decision, such as their conclusion that until we have a better way to determinewho will derive the most benefit from Avastin, "giving all women with metastatic breast cancer [bevacizumab] may harm more women than it helps." The outcomes, both potential benefits and harms, were described relative to standard chemotherapy. A bit more flesh here would've helped describe exactly what (and how many) other options are available. The story is clear about Avastin's availability and the impact of the FDA decision. FYI: it states that the EU has decided to keep Avastin approved for breast canceronlyin combination with paclitaxel. Just to be clear, in the US, it's onlyapprovedin combination with paclitaxel , too. N/A It doesn't appear to have relied solely or largely on the FDArelease.

SOLUTION:
FDA rejects Avastin as breast cancer therapy