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Health

Fauci Sounds Alarm Over Low Covid Vaccination Charges

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci warned on Sunday that the coronavirus pandemic in the US is now “going in the wrong direction” because too many Americans are still choosing not to vaccinate.

When asked by CNN’s State of the Union program about forecasts in recent statistical models that Covid-19 cases and deaths could increase in the coming months if vaccination rates do not increase, Dr. Fauci, “it won’t be good”.

With around half of Americans not yet vaccinated and the rapidly spreading delta variant in circulation, Dr. Fauci and a number of current and former health officials on Sunday expressed their anger at the situation, strongly pressing that vaccination is the best and most effective way to contain the tide of Covid cases.

“It really is a pandemic among the unvaccinated,” said Dr. Fauci, adding, “It’s like you have two kinds of America. You have the very vulnerable unvaccinated part and you have the really relatively protected vaccinated part. If you are vaccinated, you belong to a completely different category than someone who is not vaccinated. “

The situation is so dire that in the past few days even some Republican governors in states with low vaccination have demonstratively admonished people to get a Covid vaccine.

On Sunday on CNN, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said that with the new school year approaching, “is a pivotal moment in our race against the Covid virus,” adding that “what is holding us back is low vaccination rates.” . “

Governor Hutchinson, a Republican, said he recently held town halls which he attributed a 40 percent increase in vaccinations. Still, he added that some people’s resistance “has certainly hardened”. “It’s just wrong information,” he said. “They are myths.”

In CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Dr. Jerome Adams, who was a surgeon general in the Trump administration, also asked for the vaccination and expressed the decision in patriotic terms. “Get vaccinated because it will help every single American enjoy the freedoms we want to return to,” he said.

Dr. Adams said some people still have legitimate questions about vaccination, including workers who fear post-vaccination side effects could mean they miss a work day or a paycheck. He predicted that once the vaccines – currently available under emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration – are fully approved, vaccination rates would rise. That will likely prompt the military and some companies to mandate vaccinations for service members and employees, he said.

In the meantime, Dr. Adams, the message should be, “It is your choice, but choices have consequences for you and other people,” including children who are not old enough to be vaccinated and people who are medically vulnerable.

Understand the state of vaccine mandates in the United States

Several current and former officials discussed whether recommendations or mandates on wearing masks should be reintroduced.

Dr. Fauci said the Biden government is considering revising stricter guidelines on how to wear masks. In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention loosened their guidelines, saying that fully vaccinated people are not required to wear a mask in most indoor spaces.

Dr. Adams said, “Those guidelines have frankly confused citizens, it is frustrated corporations and public health officials that I still hear about, and it has been a failure in every way.”

He said the CDC should clearly state that even vaccinated people should wear masks when in public, around people whose vaccination status is unclear, or in a community where Covid cases are on the rise.

“The CDC needs to give these companies, these health authorities, a little coverage by clarifying the guidelines that they have out there,” said Dr. Adams.

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Entertainment

Pauline Anna Strom, Composer of Enduring Digital Sounds, Dies at 74

Ms. Strom did not address her blindness (“Blindness is more of a nuisance to me than anything,” she once said), although mastering her synthesizers was an experimental process, since in the 1980s when the instruments were still relatively new ‘There were no user manuals for the blind. Ultimately, she thought, her poor eyesight made her music worse.

“In my opinion, my hearing and my inner visualization have developed to a higher level than might otherwise have been the case,” she said in 1986 in a rare interview in her early career to the publication Eurock, also technical standpoint. It is entirely possible to program synthesizers and effects devices, precisely record your own work, and use a mixer. I do all of this with sound. “

“Indeed,” she added, “I prefer to work in the dark.”

Pauline Anna Tuell was born on October 1, 1946 in Baton Rouge, La., The daughter of Paul and Marjorie (Landry) Tuell. Growing up in Kentucky in a Roman Catholic household, she said chants and other types of church music influenced her musical ideas, as did the works of Bach, Chopin, and others.

She was married twice, to Bob Strom and then to Kevin Bierl, but the dates of these marriages and how they ended, like many details of their life, are hard to come by. She moved to San Francisco when her husband – it is unclear which one – was stationed there during the military. Withdrawn by nature, she lived in the same apartment in San Francisco for decades. (“Thank goodness this town is in control of the rent,” she told the listentothis.info website in 2018.)

Her early musical endeavors included some do-it-yourself sound effects like in “Emerald Pool,” but she gradually became more adept at using the multiple synthesizers she had accumulated to get the sound she wanted. She was influenced by the work of the German band Tangerine Dream and the German composer Klaus Schulze, pioneers of electronic music.

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Entertainment

Elias Rahbani, Lebanese Composer Who Sought New Sounds, Dies at 82

On the Friday evening before the coronavirus hit Beirut, a pulsating crowd of partygoers stomped on the roof of a warehouse overlooking the harbor, dancing retro and fresh to music at the same time. His beat was unstoppable, his sound a mixture of lush Arabic diva melody, French pop from the 1960s and disco.

The musical mix did not require modern adjustments by a DJ. It was just another Elias Rahbani experiment.

From the 1960s to 1980s, Mr Rahbani, a Lebanese composer and lyricist who died of Covid-19 on January 4 at the age of 82, wrote instant classics for the Arab world’s most popular singers, commercial jingles, political anthems, movie soundtracks and Music for underground and experimental Arab artists.

The Rahbani sound was omnipresent. Many Lebanese people remember the jingles he wrote for picon cheese or Rayovac batteries, or the love themes he composed in 1974 for popular TV shows and films such as “Habibati” (“My Beloved”). His style changed often: he was one of the first composers to combine western electric instruments with traditional Arabic and combine western genres – prog rock, funk, R&B – with traditional Lebanese dabke folk dance music.

“His music is engraved in the memory of all Lebanese,” said Ernesto Chahoud, a Lebanese DJ who runs the Beirut Groove Collective, which hosted the camp parties. “He’s made great Arabic music, great Lebanese music, and at the same time he’s done all these western styles. That’s why it’s timeless. That’s why a lot of people want to hear his music today. “

He was never the face of the songs, unlike the celebrities he wrote for, including Fayrouz, the legendary Lebanese singer with the passed out voice, or Sabah, the film and music star with the golden hair. Along with his older brothers Mansour and Assi Rahbani – the musical duo of the Rahbani brothers – Elias Rahbani was popular among Lebanon’s political, religious and class divisions.

Still, he had ambitions that exceeded the borders of tiny Lebanon. One of his sons, Ghassan, said Mr Rahbani nearly signed a contract with a French company in 1976 that would have given him a wider audience and perhaps greater control over the rights to his music. it would also have meant moving to France. However, at the last minute he was overtaken by an onslaught of fondness for his country and decided not to sign.

Updated

Jan. 26, 2021, 7:36 ET

“My father lived with regret for the rest of his life,” said Ghassan Rahbani. Mr Rahbani died in a hospital in Beirut, his family said.

When he rejected the French treaty, Lebanon had just gotten into civil war. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the fighting from 1975 to 1990. When it became too dangerous for Mr. Rahbani to travel to his usual studio in Beirut, he set up a makeshift facility in his apartment north of the city. He later evacuated to a rental property further north.

But he stayed productive.

Mr. Rahbani produced more than 6,000 tunes, said Mr. Chahoud. He wrote for pop stars; He wrote for an Armenian-Lebanese band, The News, who rode Mr. Rahbani’s psychedelic rock compositions to gain international recognition. He has written for political parties across the spectrum, including the Baathist Party of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

When asked about his political sympathies, he refused to be labeled. “I am above all, and everyone comes to me,” he once said, according to his son Ghassan.

Elias Hanna Rahbani was born on June 26, 1938 in Antelias, Lebanon, north of Beirut, to Hanna Assi Rahbani, a restaurant owner, and Saada Saab Rahbani, a housewife. The elder Mr. Rahbani played the bouzok, a lutel-like instrument. He died when Elias was 5 years old.

Elias Rahbani told Mr. Chahoud that he started playing the piano as a child after hearing hymns from the monastery near his family home. He became a pianist, but an injury to his right thumb forced him to switch to composing at the age of 19, said his son Ghassan. He finally got his big break while working for Radio Lebanon and writing songs for the singer Sabah.

Mr. Rahbani often worked with his older brothers who became famous for having written much of Fayrouz’s music. Although Mr. Rahbani wrote for many mainstream artists, he increasingly experimented with new sounds from around the world and often provided the material that helped kick-start the careers of little-known Lebanese bands and singers. Funk, French-Arabic, Latin American music, psychedelic rock and the French pop yé-yé all influenced his work.

In the 1970s, Mr. Rahbani was one of the first musicians to introduce western drums, electric guitars and synthesizers to Arabic music and use them in albums such as the traditional oud (which also resembles a lute) and the durbakke (a small hand drum) one inserted “Mosaic of the Orient.” Mr Chahoud said tracks on the album had been sampled far outside Lebanon, including by the Black Eyed Peas.

In recent years, Western-influenced Arabic music from Mr. Rahbani’s time has become popular in clubs and on internet radio in the Middle East and beyond. It is often played by DJs browsing vintage record and tape archives to find and promote songs by lesser known artists. well-known Arab artists.

But in Lebanon, Mr. Rahbani never left the soundtrack.

Hwaida Saad contributed to the coverage.