Exit strategy of COVID-19 crisis and pathways of Vaccination

There is a strong coordinated effort by vaccination groups all over the world to put an end to the current crisis of COVID-19. The Mass vaccination first started in the UK on 8th December 2020 and soon afterward covered all of the globe. Now sufficient data are available to analyse and compare some results to explore many aftereffects of vaccination. Some influence variables on transmissions of the disease were discussed e.g., mass vaccination, lockdown and seasonality. To address seasonality, similarities between COVID-19 and seasonal Flu are discussed to gain useful insight. Like Flu, seasonality was shown to play a dominant role in transmissions of COVID-19 in the Eu-rope and US. In terms of mass vaccination, adverse reactions after vaccination received attention, as health and safety issues of the general public are of prime importance. Apart from direct side effects, the secondary effect of mass vaccination needs attention too. After the initiation of vaccination programme , almost all countries experienced a sudden surge of transmission and most countries had to impose strict lockdown measures. Many countries, those showed a low prevalence of the disease, suddenly showed a steep jump after the onset of mass vaccination. Some countries even followed a synchronized pattern between the rate of transmissions and the variation of vaccine doses; the pattern seemed distinct with the sudden steep rise/fall in vaccine doses (e.g., countries India, Indonesia among others). In that context, fast mutation of the virus and new variants after mass vaccination and possible mechanisms/consequences were discussed. Balanced discussion, critical and open analyses are desperately needed in the current crucial stage. Debating, questioning and criticism are always the foundation of good science and the main pillars to its progress. Following that objective, it is an effort to explore pragmatically, areas relating to the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine and the exit strategy via the pathway of vaccination. Policymakers, academics, patients and common people will be greatly benefitted from such critical, transparent and balanced analyses.

Closing a Bitcoin Trade Optimally under Partial Information: Performance Assessment of a Stochastic Disorder Model

The Bitcoin market exhibits characteristics of a market with pricing bubbles. The price is very volatile, and it inherits the risk of quickly increasing to a peak and decreasing from the peak even faster. In this context, it is vital for investors to close their long positions optimally. In this study, we investigate the performance of the partially observable digital-drift model of Ekström and Lindberg and the corresponding optimal exit strategy on a Bitcoin trade. In order to estimate the unknown intensity of the random drift change time, we refer to Bitcoin halving events, which are considered as pivotal events that push the price up. The out-of-sample performance analysis of the model yields returns values ranging between 9% and 1153%. We conclude that the return of the initiated Bitcoin momentum trades heavily depends on the entry date: the earlier we entered, the higher the expected return at the optimal exit time suggested by the model. Overall, to the extent of our analysis, the model provides a supporting framework for exit decisions, but is by far not the ultimate tool to succeed in every trade.

The Royal Bay Bakery

Theoretical basis There are a range of business evaluation methods that can be applied to determine the value of a business. Ultimately, the valuation of a business is what someone will pay for it when the sale transaction is completed. When determining the value of their own business, business owners are often influenced by how hard they have worked to start and build up the business, what the business represents and their projections for the future (Hawkey, 2017). This case provides an opportunity for students to consider exit strategy planning and how to establish a fair market price for a business, how to consider the value of good will and, in particular, the value associated with running an environmentally conscious bakery operation. The trend toward environmental responsibility and green practices in the small business community has started to have an impact on the value of small companies (Inc. 2021). Finally, the case raises the issue of the personal values of the owners and the related implication of finding a buyer with similar values and interests for a bakery business. Research methodology This case was field researched and the company and individuals are not disguised. One of the authors interviewed the two owners of The Royal Bakery. There were three interviews over a six-month period. The interviews were audio recorded. An ethical review for this research was completed at the co-authors’ institution, and a case release was signed. Case overview/synopsis The Royal Bay Bakery presents Dave Grove and Gwen Snyder who, with over 30 years in the bakery business, had started to consider next steps toward retirement. Royal Bay Bakery was profitable and growing. As they prepared to retire and sell the business, they were unsure about how to maximize the value of the business. They also wanted to find a buyer who would recognize and continue their business commitment to environmental and social sustainability. Complexity academic level This case may be taught in a class on exit strategies for small family businesses in the context of a small business course. This case is appropriate for both undergraduate seniors and graduate students. The case may be used to help students understand small business valuation, family ownership and exit strategies and environmental practices in small businesses. Instructors may choose to emphasize specific conceptual tools, including SWOT analysis, and business valuation. The case may also be used to reinforce applications of exit strategy for small, family-owned businesses.

Entrepreneurs’ Exit Strategy Intentions and Their Final Exit Paths

This paper explores entrepreneurs’ initially intended exit strategies and compares them to their final exit paths using an inductive approach that builds on the grounded theory methodology. Our data shows that initially intended and final exit strategies differ among entrepreneurs. Two groups of entrepreneurs emerged from our data. The first group comprises entrepreneurs who financed their firms through equity investors. The second group is made up of entrepreneurs who financed their businesses solely with their own equities. Our data shows that the first group originally intended a financial harvest exit strategy and settled with this harvest exit strategy. The second group initially intended a stewardship exit strategy but did not succeed. We used the theory of planned behavior and the behavioral agency model to analyze our data. By examining our results from these two theoretical perspectives, our study explains how entrepreneurs’ exit intentions lead to their actual exit strategies.

Sustainability of the Bank of Japan’s ETF Purchasing Policy

The Bank of Japan is the only central bank that holds enormous amounts of stocks of listed companies by purchasing ETFs via its unconventional monetary policy measures. The Bank of Japan has been buying ETFs for more than a decade and, seemingly, has no awareness that it has become a huge investor in the stock market. This article explains how this policy has potentially distorted market mechanisms and how it is difficult to find an exit strategy.

BlocTrain: Block-Wise Conditional Training and Inference for Efficient Spike-Based Deep Learning

Spiking neural networks (SNNs), with their inherent capability to learn sparse spike-based input representations over time, offer a promising solution for enabling the next generation of intelligent autonomous systems. Nevertheless, end-to-end training of deep SNNs is both compute- and memory-intensive because of the need to backpropagate error gradients through time. We propose BlocTrain, which is a scalable and complexity-aware incremental algorithm for memory-efficient training of deep SNNs. We divide a deep SNN into blocks, where each block consists of few convolutional layers followed by a classifier. We train the blocks sequentially using local errors from the classifier. Once a given block is trained, our algorithm dynamically figures out easy vs. hard classes using the class-wise accuracy, and trains the deeper block only on the hard class inputs. In addition, we also incorporate a hard class detector (HCD) per block that is used during inference to exit early for the easy class inputs and activate the deeper blocks only for the hard class inputs. We trained ResNet-9 SNN divided into three blocks, using BlocTrain, on CIFAR-10 and obtained 86.4% accuracy, which is achieved with up to 2.95× lower memory requirement during the course of training, and 1.89× compute efficiency per inference (due to early exit strategy) with 1.45× memory overhead (primarily due to classifier weights) compared to end-to-end network. We also trained ResNet-11, divided into four blocks, on CIFAR-100 and obtained 58.21% accuracy, which is one of the first reported accuracy for SNN trained entirely with spike-based backpropagation on CIFAR-100.

Will COVID-19 Threaten the Survival of the Airline Industry?

The pandemic causes social distancing and lockdown, which impedes consumer confidence and contracts the economy. Hence, this study analyzes the corona (COVID-19) impact on the airline industry revenues (ALR) and forecast by the vector autoregression (VAR) method. The results indicate that gross domestic product (GDP) and air cargo are the best predictors of ALR. The forecasting outcomes explore if ALR will decline and expect to back to pre-COVID-19 in 2023. Our results resemble both the V-shaped and U-shaped, which suggests slow gradual recovery with longer lockdown and border disclosure. The government can restore confidence building by providing economic stimulus packages and can encourage the airline to return to travel. Furthermore, softening the passenger rules concerning the refund of unflown ticket, reducing taxes, and reducing overflight taxes, all reduce the costs. Similarly, the mutually recognized global standards are crucial for effective execution, and any temporary measures taken by the government should have a clear exit strategy. The study major limitation includes the lack of relevant research and data availability.

Anthony Bourdain's long-burning suicidal wick -- in his own words

As Bourdain continued to struggle publicly with his demons over the years, he also became increasingly comfortable with the idea of suicide as potential exit strategy. He became particularly comfortable with the idea of hanging himself as an option, and was especially drawn to the idea of hanging himself in the shower. Sufficiently comfortable that he referred casually and explicitly to killing himself in this way throughout his professional career. Not occasionally, but frequently. A cursory review of his public statements over the years reveals 19 separate occasions— in writing, during interviews, and on camera— on which he refers to suicide by hanging. On the vast majority of these occasions he refers explicitly to hanging himself in the shower, on 1 occasion more specifically to hanging himself in the shower of his hotel room, and on 1 occasion even more specifically to hanging himself in the shower stall of his lonely hotel room: