Comparing public policy implementation in Taiwan and Vietnam in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak: A review

Taiwan and Vietnam have taken successful measures to combat the spread of COVID-19 at the early stages. Many authors attributed the successful policies to the lessons learned by these countries during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) pandemic in 2002.(Ohara, 2004) This manuscript provides a summary of recent early-stage policies that were successful in mitigating the spread and creating resilience against the negative consequences of COVID-19 in Taiwan and Vietnam. Crucially, these policies go beyond and complement social isolation. As social isolation is expected to have a negative socio-economic impact on the population and adherence is likely to decrease with time(Armitage and Nellums, 2020; Weems et al., 2020), it is important to consider a broad range of policies to promote a steady control of the COVID-19 spread. Initially, we provide a brief introduction to some general concepts related to COVID-19. Thereafter, we introduce a concise review of policies and their dates relative to the first detection case in Taiwan and Vietnam as well as doing a comparative analysis

CKM angles from non-leptonic B decays using SU(3) flavour symmetry

We discuss the determination of the CKM angles gamma and alpha using recent data from non-leptonic B decays together with flavour symmetries. Penguin effects are controlled by means of the CP-averaged branching ratio B_d \to \pi^\pm K^\mp. The information from A_{CP}(B_d \to J/\Psi K_S) (two solutions for phi_d), Rb and gamma allow us to determine beta, even in presence of New Physics not affecting Delta B=1 amplitudes. In this context we address the question of to what extent there is still space for New Physics.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, Invited talk given at International Europhysics Conference on High-Energy Physics (HEP 2003), Aachen, Germany, 17-23 Jul 200