  In his recent Comments E. Shuryak reiterates old, unfortunately misleading
arguments in favor of deconfined Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) immediately above the
chiral restoration pseudocritical temperature. In a Comment devoted to our view
of QCD at high temperatures he does not address and even mention the essence of
our arguments. In recent years a new "hidden" symmetry in QCD was discovered.
It is a symmetry of the electric sector of QCD, that is higher than the chiral
symmetry of the QCD Lagrangian as the whole. This symmetry was clearly observed
above T_c in spatial correlators and very recently also in time correlators.
The latter correlators are directly related to observable spectral density.
Then in a model-independent way we conclude that degrees of freedom in QCD
above T_c, but below roughly 3T_c, are chirally symmetric quarks bound by the
chromoelectric field into color-singlet compounds without the chromomagnetic
effects. This regime of QCD has been referred to as a Stringy Fluid since such
objects are very reminiscent of strings.At higher temperatures there is a very
smooth transition to the partonic degrees of freedom, i.e. to the QGP regime.
Here we will address some of the points made by Shuryak.
