RE:Shorts and dead cat bounce. Quite the opposite.If short seller are sure this will be halted or bankrupt with no value, they will just keep the short as they will either be able to buy back the shares in some grey market for nothing or their short position will be settle at zero by the broker.
But if the shorts believes there could be some kind of plan for the Company to get through this nightmare (financing, whatever) and that the riks on the upside increase, they could cover to crystallize their gain (being 90% of the max gain).
So a bounce due to short covering will occur only if there is some kind of "good news". At the same time, short covering would maybe just compensate long time holder exiting between 1 and 2 cad.