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Italian foreign minister Luigi Di Maio (also a former M5S leader) said in an interview (not quoted in the article, but he says it 20 seconds in the embedded video) that

The model that is working is that of the red zones that we created in the first ten towns in Lombardy. Two weeks since they went into lockdown they have zero infection rates.

Is he being a little figurative here like politicians sometimes are, or where the infections exactly zero in those towns following the lockdowns? I have no doubt the measures [would] have reduced the spread of the virus, but did they cut it right down to zero, in the gathered statistics?

I'm fine with having this answered with official Italian infection figures for those towns, i.e. "to the best of our knowledge given the data gathered". This is not a "I'm doubting the statistics" question (which would be much harder to answer), but "I doubt the politician is not exaggerating the actual statistics."

Fizz
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    Questions about unresolved current events are off-topic. – Daniel R Hicks Mar 13 '20 at 01:22
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    @DanielRHicks: are you saying there are no published statistics for those towns? The WHO demands such info due to their PHEIC declaration on Covid-19. It's quite fine if the data is up to today, I'm not asking if there will be no infections in those towns in the future.... – Fizz Mar 13 '20 at 01:26
  • @Fizz - I'm saying that "zero infection rate", in the current environment, could simply mean "relatively low". And measures of the rate of infection would require a highly organized regimen of testing -- something that is impossible among all the chaos. – Daniel R Hicks Mar 13 '20 at 01:42
  • @DanielRHicks: I'm just asking if what he said matches the data collected, as faulty as that data might be. I see you asked a question here whether someone correctly represented what Trump said (about some issue). This question is no different. Did X correctly represent what Y said, where X in this case is Di Maio and and Y are the published statistics. (And unlike your question on Trump, this one is clearly about a more scientifically related topic.) – Fizz Mar 13 '20 at 01:44
  • @Fizz But how is it "notable"? – Daniel R Hicks Mar 13 '20 at 02:17
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    @DanielRHicks: because a notable government official made this claim about a notable public health issue in a television interview re-published on the website of an established (and thus quite notable) news-media organization. (Somewhat unlike your Facebook-sourced questions, I admit.) – Fizz Mar 13 '20 at 02:19
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    @DanielRHicks: We have a published claim made by politician who is likely to be widely believed. We have plenty of official statistics being published daily. This seems answerable. (The question of whether there are cases that officials, and therefore the Foreign Minister don't know about is kind of moot, unless we can also show that there has been no testing.) – Oddthinking Mar 13 '20 at 03:25
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    He meant that that day no new cases were found. Keep in mind that the town that were locked down don't compare to Wuhan area. Independent of the political view of this commenter, he is not a politician he is the foreign minister during a speach in TV. So the data might be only a few case or zero. I doubt any manipulation of data. Italy did none. Italy current strategy results in maximising death rate. Test are not applied to asymptomatic people unless related to positive ones. – Alchimista Mar 16 '20 at 07:43
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    @Alchimista I'm confused... "he is not a politician, he is the foreign minister" ... what? – CGCampbell Apr 08 '20 at 00:04
  • My meaning was right that he spoken as minister not just as a politician. – Alchimista Apr 13 '20 at 09:06

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