Uptown Messenger (https://uptownmessenger.com/category/coronavirus/page/2/)
Walter L. Cohen High School, at 3520 Dryades St. in the Milan neighborhood, is offering $100 to eligible students who have received or will receive the Covid-19 vaccine. At a vaccination event on Thursday (Nov. 18), around 40 students took advantage of the offer and received their first or second shot. The initiative began Sept.
While New Orleanians are currently enjoying glorious fall weather and the loosening of mask mandates, don’t think for one minute that the next wave of the virus won’t be heading this way with the cooler temperatures and the influx of tourists during the holiday season.
Stubborn unvaccinated people continue to spread Covid-19 around the world. Every day, more than 1,000 Americans are still dying from the disease. Only three out of five U.S. residents are fully vaccinated against the virus. And only 15% of those eligible have gotten a booster shot.
Louisiana still has a relatively low vaccination rate as compared to many other states. It will also be difficult to assess the vaccination status of visitors who will descend on the Crescent City for Thanksgiving and the Bayou Classic.
Many members of the legal community are aggressively marketing their services in the wake of Hurricane Ida to assist businesses or homeowners and renters with getting the money they deserve from insurance companies. After all, most of us pay thousands of dollars annually for coverage and should be compensated whenever legitimate claim arise. Not so fast, say other lawyers. At least two local attorneys, Megan Kiefer and Sal Brocato, are advising that citizens retain lawyers only if they feel their insurance carrier is not operating in good faith. “It’s premature to hire a lawyer right now,” Kiefer said.
By Daniel Schwalm and Domonique Tolliver
Classes began at Xavier University of Louisiana on Aug. 16 amid a citywide surge in coronavirus cases fueled by the delta variant. Between Aug. 7 and 13, Xavier reported three new positive Covid cases. Two students tested positive along with one employee.
Porch concerts had been popping up throughout the city when Milan area residents Natalia and Guy Gonzalez began hosting concerts on their Marengo Street front porch. The tradition started for the Gonzalezes in the fall of 2020, after a musician asked Natalia’s 94-year-old mother if she would put on a porch concert to help out the Radio Bird Quartet. She agreed, and then Natalia took on the project. “We have had Radio Bird, of course, as well as The Walrus, a Beatles cover band,” Natalia Gonzalez said. “In fact, recently when their Zony Mash show got canceled, they came to our porch and played the concert there.”
They are now presenting shows twice monthly, with Mia Borders booked for an upcoming show.
I’ve been waiting for a savvy organization like the Audubon Zoo to announce plans to vaccinate vulnerable animals against COVID-19. Since the virus might have started in wild animals and was later transmitted to humans, it makes good sense that the zoo’s four-legged residents — and even our family pets — could catch the virus. Mike VII, LSU’s live tiger mascot, is probably the best-known animal in Louisiana to be vaccinated against COVID-19. He got his second dose earlier this week and will again be available for close-up visits later this month.
Mike’s vaccine was donated by the drug manufacturer Zoetis, which is also providing more than 11,000 vaccine doses for mammalian species residing at the Audubon Zoo and dozens of other conservatories, sanctuaries, zoos and academic institutions around the country. Audubon will use their doses to inoculate at-risk animals including apes, big cats, and such mustelids as ferrets, according to WWL-TV.
Most of us don’t have an ape or big cat at home to protect, but we do have domestic pets.
By Daniel Schwalm and Domonique Tolliver, Uptown Messenger
This fall, Tulane University will require all students to receive the coronavirus vaccine, wear masks while indoors on campus and get tested regularly for COVID-19. Before the Delta variant surge, the university had been planning to relax its COVID guidelines as most of its students, faculty and staff were vaccinated. Vaccinated individuals would have been allowed go unmasked on campus. The school also had been planning to scale down its regular testing regimen, only requiring regular tests for those who were unvaccinated. However, on July 30, the city reinstated the indoor citywide mask mandate, for both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, and colleges in the city are following suit.
The Delta variant is quickly overtaking America. It already accounts for 93% of Covid-19 infections. To combat it, government and the private sector are announcing new mandates almost daily. Anyone planning to pay $200 or more to see the Rolling Stones at Jazz Fest in October must surely be wondering if a vaccination card or a recent negative Covid-test will be required for admission. Without such precautions, the Jazz and Heritage Festival, French Quarter Festival, Saints games and other fall special events could become superspreaders unlike any seen before.
Jazz Fest producer Quint Davis has always said the Fest will adhere to the prevailing Covid guidelines.
Chateau Sew & Sew Fabric & Sewing Studio on Magazine Street seems like an anachronism in the time when the number of people who sew (sewists as they are now called) is declining. But the folks at Chateau Sew have a plan. It was started in 2015 by the mother-daughter team of Susan Jackson, a quilter, and her daughter Karen Flournoy, who mostly made garments. When Flournoy’s son was about to start school full-time, her mother suggested that, because she loves fabrics and had made clothes for her young son, they open a shop. “In 2014, I went to work on a business plan, researching how to source fabrics.
The last live show for musician David Doucet, a longtime Uptown resident, was March 8, 2020, at The Dakota in Minneapolis, playing with Cajun band BeauSoleil. David, guitarist for the Grammy-awarded band, is widely credited with transforming the acoustic guitar into an important voice of southwest Louisiana’s signature music. The younger brother of Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet, the Touro area resident has used his distinctive hybrid of fingerpicking and flatpicking guitar playing to enhance the performances of BeauSoleil, the band he and his brother have performed in since the mid-1970s. In 1991, David Doucet launched his own solo debut with the release of the album “Quand J’ai Parti.” David is bilingual, having learned French from his parents and grandparents, who luckily still spoke the language.
