Some kind of record

This isn’t precisely statistics, but Bloomberg Opinion may have set some kind of record for the density of easily checkable false statements in a single column that’s still making a basically sound argument.  Joe Nocera was arguing in favour of strict lockdown policy like the one in New Zealand.

Just looking at the tweets we have

1. New Zealanders aren’t allowed to drive except in emergencies and can only be out of the house for an hour a day, to get exercise or to buy essentials. This one-hour limit is enforced by the police. The one hour limit isn’t true, and so isn’t being enforced by police. The ‘only in emergencies’ is at best misleading: you can drive to buy essentials.
2. At the pharmacy, only one person is allowed in at a time, and clerks retrieve the goods so customers never touch anything until they return home. The wait to get in a grocery store is around an hour. If you don’t have a mask and gloves, you won’t get in. True as to pharmacies.  False as to the wait to get in a grocery store — which also contradicts the alleged one-hour limit.  False as to masks and gloves: the use of masks is encouraged by some groups but they are not required and users are only barely a majority, if that. Gloves aren’t even recommended.
3. In New Zealand…
   Every restaurant is closed.

   There’s no take-out.
   There are no deliveries.
   E-commerce has been halted. Food-processing companies still operate, but virtually every other form of blue-collar work is shut down. True on restaurant closures (until tomorrow).  It’s ambiguous whether ‘deliveries’ goes with the previous bullet or the following one, but e-commerce is certainly not halted. You can’t get prepared food delivered, but groceries, wine and spirits, some office equipment, and a range of other things are being delivered.  I have bought an office chair, because I’m working from home until at least the end of July.  The blue-collar work thing is true-ish — he may underestimate how much of NZ’s economy is in food production for export, but construction and forestry are shut down.  
4. Citizens are surviving financially with emergency checks from the government. Essential workers in New Zealand are truly essential. Although there are Covid-19 clusters — a church; a rest home; a wedding party — workplaces have largely been virus-free.  The Marist College cluster and the World Hereford Conference definitely count as ‘workplace’.  The government is primarily sending payments to businesses so they can keep employees or provide them sick leave, and to self-employed people, though there has obviously been an increase in the number of people getting unemployment benefits and applying for hardship grants. And, of course, we don’t use checks for all this.

It’s probably best to think of the column as ‘about New Zealand’ in the same way Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado is ‘about Japan’ — it’s really just a background setting to criticise the writer’s own country.