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Tag Archives: Washing
Samsung recalls more than 660,000 washing machines after fire hazard reports
New York
CNN
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Samsung recalled more than 660,000 washing machines, warning customers that the machine could short-circuit and overheat, posing a fire hazard.
The company received 51 reports of “smoking, melting, overheating or fire involving the washers.” Ten of these reports resulted in property damage, and three customers reported injuries from smoke inhalation.
Several models of Samsung’s top-load washers with super speed wash are affected: the WA49B, WA50B, WA51A, WA52A, WA54A and WA55A. The machines were sold in white, black, champagne, and ivory colors, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission published the range of serial numbers for the 14 models recalled.
The 663,500 washing machines were sold at bigbox retailers such as Best Buy, Costco, The Home Depot, and Lowe’s from June 2021 through December 2022, costing between $900 and $1,500.
A software update can fix the fire hazard. “Consumers should immediately check whether their washer’s software has been updated to prevent the hazard; and, if not, consumers should immediately stop using the washer until the software is updated,” the CPSC said.
All wi-fi equipped washers should automatically download the free software repair when connected to the internet, Samsung said. Those who don’t have internet can get a free dongle from Samsung to plug in and download the free software repair.
Whales euthanized in New Zealand after washing up on Chatham Islands
Many of the whales were already dead, but the remaining ones had to be euthanized to minimize their suffering because they could not be put back into the water, the department added. That operation ended Wednesday, it said.
“This is a sad event for the team and the community,” Dave Lundquist, a technical adviser to the conservation department, said in a statement, adding that representatives of tribes that inhabit Chatham Island “were present to support” the department’s efforts. “Many people” were “affected” by the terrible scenes, he said.
Some 200 whales died just two weeks ago after stranding themselves on the west coast of Tasmania, an Australian island southeast of the mainland.
Efforts to save the whales that were not already dead when they washed up on the Chatham Islands were made more difficult by the archipelago’s remote location and the predators roaming the waters that surround it, the department said.
“We do not actively refloat whales on the Chatham Islands due to the risk of shark attack to humans and the whales themselves, so euthanasia was the kindest option,” Lundquist said.
Experts don’t always know why whales wash up on land, but it’s a relatively common occurrence that can also affect other marine animals such as dolphins. A “mass stranding” involves at least two animals, unless it involves a mother and calf. Pilot whales in particular are “prolific stranders,” according to the conservation department.
The largest mass stranding recorded on the Chatham Islands involved nearly 1,000 whales and happened more than 100 years ago, the department said.
The archipelago is extremely remote — it takes about two hours to fly from New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, to Chatham Islands Tuuta Airport — and “limited communications and challenging logistics” make operating there difficult, the department added.
When whales that strand themselves are not already dead or seriously injured, conservationists will in some cases work to “refloat” them into the water. This involves keeping the whales cool and wet on land to stabilize them before carrying them back into the ocean using tarpaulins or large floating platforms.
Because pilot whales are social mammals, their instinct is to stay with their pods; they might collectively strand themselves in an effort to help one injured whale or beach themselves even after they are refloated if they hear a whale’s distress call from land.
“So even when you got some animals successfully into deeper waters, it’s not uncommon for them to turn tail and come straight back in,” Karen Stockin, a marine biology researcher at Massey University in New Zealand, told The Washington Post in 2020.
In September, 32 whales were refloated outside Macquarie Harbor in Tasmania after the stranding there. The island’s Parks and Wildlife Service said several of them re-stranded that night. It said it would work to “re-float and release the remaining live whales.”
Lundquist said Wednesday that “all the stranded pilot whales are now deceased, and their bodies will be allowed to decompose naturally.”
“These events are tough, challenging situations,” the conservation department’s Chatham Islands team said in a statement. “Although they are natural occurrences, they are still sad and difficult for those helping.”
Long COVID patients spend their life savings on unproven “blood washing”
Enlarge / A plasma donor is connected to an apheresis machine, which separates plasma from blood as people donate blood plasma for medicines, at the Twickenham Donor Centre, southwest London on April 7, 2021.
The COVID-19 pandemic is considered by many experts to be a mass disabling event. Though most people fully recover from a battle with the highly infectious coronavirus, a significant chunk of patients develop lingering, sometimes debilitating symptoms—aka long COVID. Estimates of how many COVID patients endure long-term symptoms can vary considerably. But the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently estimated that nearly one in five COVID patients report persistent symptoms. With hundreds of millions of COVID-19 cases reported around the globe, even the more modest estimates would still suggest that tens of millions have lasting effects.
Yet, as those patients seek effective care, researchers are still scrambling to define, understand, and treat this new phenomenon. Many patients have reported uphill battles for finding care and relief, including long waits at clinics and few treatment options when they see a care provider.
Cue the quacks. This situation is ripe for unscrupulous actors to step in and begin offering unproven products and treatments—likely at exorbitant prices. It’s a tried-and-true model: When modern medicine is not yet able to provide evidence-based treatment, quacks slither in to console the desperate, untreated patients. Amid their sympathetic platitudes, they rebuke modern medicine, scowl at callous physicians, and scoff at the slow pace and high price of clinical trials. With any ill-gotten trust they earn, these bad actors can peddle unproven treatments and false hope.
There are already reports in the US of such unproven long COVID treatments, such as supplements, vitamins, infusions, fasts, ozone therapy, and off-label drug prescribing. But, a British investigation published this week highlights a growing international trend of pricy “blood washing” treatments.
Costly cleanse
The investigation, carried out by the British outlet ITV News and the British Journal of Medicine, revealed that thousands of long COVID patients are traveling to private clinics in various countries—including Switzerland, Germany, and Cyprus—to receive blood filtering or apheresis, which is not proven to treat long COVID.
Apheresis is an established medical therapy, but it’s used to treat specific conditions by filtering out known problematic components of blood, such as filtering out LDL (low-density lipoprotein) in people with intractable high cholesterol, or removing malignant white blood cells in people with leukemia.
In the case of long COVID patients, it seems apheresis treatments are used to remove a variety of things that may or may not be problematic. That includes LDL and inflammatory molecules, a strategy initially designed to treat people with cardiovascular disease. Internal medicine doctor Beate Jaeger, who runs the Lipid Center North Rhine in Germany and has started treating long COVID patients, touts the method, which involves filtering blood through a heparin filter. She also prescribes long COVID patients a cocktail of anticoagulant drugs.
Jaeger hypothesizes that the blood of people with long COVID is too viscous and contains small blood clots. She suggests that thinning the blood with drugs and apheresis can improve microcirculation and overall health. But there’s no evidence that this hypothesis is correct or that the treatment is effective. When Jaeger tried to publish her hypothesis in a German medical journal, it was rejected.
Robert Ariens, professor of vascular biology at the University of Leeds School of Medicine, told the BMJ and ITV that the treatment is premature. For one thing, researchers don’t understand how microclots form, if apheresis and anticoagulation drugs reduce them, and if a reduction would even matter for disease. “If we don’t know the mechanisms by which the microclots form and whether or not they are causative of disease, it seems premature to design a treatment to take the microclots away, as both apheresis and triple anticoagulation are not without risks, the obvious one being bleeding,” Ariens said.
False hope
Jaeger, meanwhile, defended treating patients despite a rejected hypothesis and a lack of evidence. She expressed anger over “dogmatism” in medicine and claimed to have treated patients in her clinic who arrived in wheelchairs but walked out. “If I see a child in a wheelchair suffering for a year, I prefer to treat and not to wait for 100 percent evidence,” she said.
And Jaeger isn’t alone; other clinics have also started offering apheresis for long COVID. The British investigation interviewed a woman in the Netherlands, Gitte Boumeester, who paid more than $60,000—nearly all her savings—for treatment at a new long COVID clinic in Cyprus after seeing positive anecdotes online. The woman, desperate for relief from her long COVID symptoms, signed a dubious consent form filled with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and half-finished sentences that waived her rights.
Daniel Sokol, a London barrister and medical ethicist, said the form would be invalid under English and Welsh law. “You can’t say, ‘By the way, you agree not to sue us if we cause you horrible injury or kill you, even if it’s through our own negligence,'” he told the investigators. “You can’t do that.”
At the Cyprus clinic, Boumeester received a battery of other unproven treatments along with the apheresis, including vitamin infusions, hyperbaric oxygen treatment, anticoagulants, and hydroxychloroquine, which is notoriously ineffective against COVID-19. After two months in Cyprus, subjecting herself to various treatments and draining her bank account, Boumeester said she’d seen no improvement in her debilitating symptoms, which include heart palpitations, chest pain, shortness of breath, and brain fog.
“I do think they should emphasize the experimental nature of the treatments more, especially because it’s so expensive,” Boumeester said. “I realized before I started that the outcome was uncertain, but everyone at the clinic is so positive that you start to believe it too and get your hopes up.”
Patients have turned to ‘blood washing’ to treat long COVID
Desperate to have their lives back, long COVID patients are turning to an expensive “last resort” therapy to cure the mysterious illness.
Apheresis, or “blood washing,” is a process in which a component of blood, such as plasma, is separated and then filtered back into your body via giant needles inserted into a vein.
Gitte Boumeester, who found out about “blood washing” through a Facebook support group, spent more than $15,000 to have the treatment, BMJ and ITV News reported, in a joint investigation out Tuesday.
“I thought, what’s the worst thing I’ve got to lose?” the Dutch psychiatrist-in-training told reporters. “Money was the only thing.”
And that she did — once Boumeester concluded, two months after the procedure, that the “blood washing” didn’t work.
The process is typically used in cases where it’s necessary to remove specific components of blood, such as the treatment of blood cancers, plasma and platelet donation or to collect stem cells.
But in Germany, doctors consider it one of the last resorts for the treatment of some lipid disorders, which are marked by abnormal levels of lipids, or fats, in the blood — the effects of which some have theorized are similar to long-term COVID infection.
Boumeester’s battery of tests revealed nothing about her condition, which developed soon after she caught the SARS-CoV-2 virus in November 2020, despite her debilitating exhaustion.
Yet some researchers, namely Dr. Beate Jaeger, have hypothesized that long COVID may be caused by small clots in the blood that get in the way of the flow of oxygen, leading to the telltale extreme fatigue and muscle aches. Thus, “washing” the blood of unnecessary lipids and proteins, in combination with the use of anticoagulants, blood thinners such as clopidogrel, apixaban and heparin, could help clear the capillaries for better blood circulation.
Jaeger, a cardiovascular specialist in Mülheim, Germany, fought to see apheresis used on COVID patients in the ICU and to publish a paper on her approach, attempts of which were denied. Finally, a pair of her patients agreed to undergo the treatment free of charge. Then, 60 more opted-in. She’s since seen “extremely successful” results in thousands of patients, she said.
In one of her reports, Jaeger claimed that a long COVID patient who used a wheelchair could miraculously walk again following treatment. Another improved their stride from a labored walk to a jog.
Beverley Hunt, medical director of the charity Thrombosis UK, told BMJ, “I am worried these patients have been offered therapies which have not been assessed by modern scientific methods: well-designed clinical trials. In this situation the treatment may or may not benefit them but, worryingly, also has the risk of harm.”
The process of apheresis is safe if properly performed, but there are potentially dire consequences to having overly-thin blood, particularly if hemorrhage occurs.
Even under the safest conditions, patients also risk financial ruin. Boumeester traveled some 1,700 air miles to the Long Covid Center in Larnaca, Cyprus. For two months, she rented an apartment on the beach while making weekly appointments for apheresis, and more unproven “add-on” therapies, such as hyperbaric oxygen and intravenous vitamin infusions.
Six rounds of “blood washing” cost her more than $1,600 per session, while additional treatments came with price tags up to about $150, which she did on the recommendation of the clinicians.
“I was a little ambivalent about all the extra treatment, but I promised myself if I was there I would do anything, to just try,” she said.
Experimental treatments are generally permitted throughout Europe as long as there’s clear patient consent, but experts fear that clinics like the Long Covid Center may be overpromising.
“People could potentially go bankrupt accessing these treatments, for which there is limited to no evidence of effectiveness,” said University of Birmingham researcher Shamil Haroon, whose work on the Therapies for Long Covid in Non-hospitalized Patients trial will eventually go on to inform how doctors approach the disease.
Like Boumeester, British businessman Chris Witham, from Bournemouth, traveled across the continent, to Kempten, Germany, for a $7,000 course of apheresis that didn’t work.
“I’d have sold my house and given it away to get better, without a second thought,” he told BMJ and ITV News.
The outlets spoke to just six long COVID patients who said the procedure improved some of their condition, though symptoms lingered.
Their reporting flies in the face of claims made by Austrian entrepreneur and long COVID sufferer Markus Klotz, who founded the clinic in Cyprus and claims it worked for him after having the treatment with Jaegar in Mülheim. “Over 80% of patients report to keep their gains permanently,” read one post on the Facebook page for the Apheresis Association, also led by Klotz.
“I realized before I started that the outcome was uncertain, but everyone at the clinic is so positive that you start to believe it too and get your hopes up,” Boumeester said.
A New Study Says Doing Chores Like Washing Dishes and Gardening Can Decrease Heart Disease Risks Among Women
Vesnaandjic / Getty Images
Completing everyday tasks, like your household chores, can seem mundane, but the reality is that these seemingly simple activities can actually boost your overall health. In fact, a new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association featured insight from researchers out of the University of California-San Diego that detailed how chores like cooking, vacuuming, gardening, and even other daily necessities like taking a shower can protect against heart disease. “The study demonstrates that all movement counts towards disease prevention,” Dr. Steve Nguyen, the study’s first author, said in a media release. “Spending more time in daily life movement, which includes a wide range of activities we all do while on our feet and out of our chairs, resulted in a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.”
The study found that participants who spent four hours each day completing “daily life movements” had 62 percent less of a chance of dying from cardiovascular or coronary heart disease. Plus, those in the study had 43 percent less of a chance of developing of developing either disease altogether and 30 percent less of a chance of experiencing a stroke. The team studied 5,416 healthy women across the United States between 63 and 97 years of age and put each minute they spent awake under one of five categories: sitting, sitting in a vehicle, standing still, walking or running, and daily life movements. The latter included activities such as getting dressed, cooking, and gardening.
Related: Science Says Completing Household Chores Can Boost Brain Health
Each participants wore an accelerometer on their waist for up to seven days to track their movements and the study authors watched their movements for almost eight years. During that timeframe, 616 volunteers in the study were diagnosed with cardiovascular disease, 268 developed coronary heart disease, 253 had a stroke, and 331 died. “Describing the beneficial associations of physical activity in terms of common behaviors could help older adults accumulate physical activity,” the study authors wrote. “Our results are noteworthy since much of the movement engaged in by older adults is associated with daily life tasks, which may not be considered PA (physical activity) by older adults themselves or by questionnaires.” The team found that “being up and about” lessened risks of big cardiovascular events or deaths and “all movement counts” towards preventing severe health conditions.
“Nonetheless, DLM should be promoted given its ubiquity in everyday life and relatively low risk,” the researchers wrote. “To determine the scope of potential health benefits of DLM, future research should test associations with other aging‐related outcomes.” The team added that “healthcare providers and future national physical guidelines should consider describing the health benefits of PA in terms of common behaviors resulting in PA, such as DLM, which could help older adults accumulate PA.”
South Africa study shows boosters failed to block omicron, bolstering case for face masks, distancing and hand washing
A study of some of the first breakthrough cases of COVID-19 caused by the highly infectious omicron variant found that booster shots of the mRNA vaccines failed to block that strain, although the infections involved only mild or moderate symptoms, confirming they are effective in preventing serious illness and death.
The study involved a group of seven Germans visiting Cape Town in South Africa who had the first documented breakthrough cases of COVID between late November and early December after receiving three vaccine doses, including at least two of the mRNA shots developed by Pfizer
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Findings were published in the medical journal the Lancet.
The group comprised five white women and two white men between 25 and 39 years of age, four of whom were participating in clinical training at hospitals, while the others were on vacation. All seven developed respiratory symptoms between Nov. 30 and Dec. 2 and tested positive for the omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. The study was approved by Stellenbosh University and the University of Cape Town.
“These findings support the need for updated vaccines to provide better protection against symptomatic infection with omicron and emphasize that non-pharmaceutical measures should be maintained,” the authors wrote.
Earlier this week, a preliminary study by a hospital in Israel found that a second booster dose failed to block omicron, even though it lifted antibodies to a higher level than they had been after a first booster shot.
See also: Omicron cases seem to have peaked in northeastern states, but national case tally remains at record levels and hospitals are slammed
In the U.S., omicron has pushed new cases and hospitalizations to record levels, according to a New York Times tracker. Cases are averaging close to 800,000 a day, while hospitalizations are above 158,000. That number includes patients in the hospital with other symptoms who have tested positive for the virus.
See: A record 8.75 million people missed work because COVID is in their house
And while case levels seem to have peaked in some of the states that were first hit hard by omicron — New York among them — the national rate remains at a record level and deaths, which lag cases and hospitalizations, are above 1,900. That’s an increase of 50% over the last two weeks and means the U.S. is suffering 9/11-scale casualties every two days.
See: Opinion: We need a decisive pivot on COVID-19: Double down on treatments for those at high risk instead of boosters and tests for everyone
Other COVID-19 news you should know:
• The National Institutes of Health on Wednesday updated its COVID-19 treatment guidelines for patients with mild to moderate forms of COVID-19 who are at high risk for disease progression. The new guidelines now include the recently authorized antivirals developed by Pfizer and Merck
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Veklury as a treatment option. The panel suggests that clinicians first use Pfizer’s Paxlovid, then sotrovimab, then Veklury, and the final option should be molnupiravir, which is the Merck/Ridgeback drug.
• The French government will unveil a timetable for easing COVID restrictions later Thursday, Reuters reported, citing spokesman Gabriel Attal, who cautioned that the omicron wave has not yet passed. Attal said France’s new vaccine-pass rules would help allow a softening of rules even as the incidence of infections continues to increase. France reported nearly half a million coronavirus infections on Wednesday to leave the seven-day average at 320,000 cases.
• Austria’s conservative-led government is introducing a national lottery to encourage holdouts to get vaccinated, Reuters reported separately. The news came hours before parliament passed a bill introducing a national vaccine mandate applicable to everyone 18 and older with exemptions for pregnant women, people who for medical reasons can’t be vaccinated and those who have recovered from infection by the coronavirus within a six-month span. Roughly 72% of Austria’s population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the lowest rates in Western Europe. Every 10th lottery ticket will offer a gift voucher valued at 500 euros ($568).
• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, an opponent of vaccine mandates, has tested positive for COVID, the Washington Post reported. It’s unclear whether Paxton was vaccinated or when he was infected, and his office reportedly did not reply to a request for comment. Paxton has opposed making vaccines compulsory for healthcare workers in facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funds, troops in the Texas National Guard and staff at Head Start programs.
Here’s what the numbers say
The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose above 338.9 million, and the death toll is now more than 5.56 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. leads the world with 68.7 million cases and 858,481 fatalities.
The world set a record of more than 3 million COVID cases a day between Jan. 13 and Jan. 19, AFP reported, in the latest sign of how fast omicron has spread.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine tracker is showing that some 209.5 million people living in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, equal to 63.1% of the total population.
Some 81.7 million have received a booster, equal to 39% of the fully vaccinated.
Ironing, washing up and vacuuming can help over-65s improve their physical and mental strength
Why housework is good for your health: Ironing, washing up and vacuuming can help over-65s improve their physical and mental strength… and could even protect against falls, research suggests
- A study found over-65s who do lots of housework have better physical strength
- Nearly 500 participants were quizzed about the frequency of household chores
- Pensioners who engaged in heavy housework had a 14% higher attention span
Doing the vacuuming, washing up and ironing can often seem like thankless tasks – but it turns out household chores might be the key to staying healthy in old age.
A study has found that over-65s who spend lots of time on housework have better physical strength, are mentally sharper and have greater protection against falls.
And the health benefits of housework remain regardless of people’s other recreational and physical activities, it showed.
A study has found that over-65s who spend lots of time on housework have better physical strength, are mentally sharper and have greater protection against falls (stock image)
Nearly 500 participants, aged between 21 and 90, were quizzed about the frequency of chores and other types of physical activity and given a ‘housework intensity’ score.
Light housework was defined as washing the dishes, dusting, making a bed, doing laundry, ironing, tidying up and cooking meals.
Heavy housework included window cleaning, changing bedding, vacuuming, washing or scrubbing the floor, and DIY.
Overall, a combination of light and heavy housework was ‘associated with higher cognitive function’ among over-65s, but not in younger adults.
Pensioners who engaged in more heavy housework had 14 per cent higher attention span scores and those who regularly performed light tasks tested 12 per cent better on memory tests.
Meanwhile, those who regularly performed the more physically demanding jobs around the house could stand up more quickly.
Pensioners who engaged in more heavy housework had 14% higher attention span scores and those who regularly performed light tasks tested 12% better on memory tests (stock image)
They also had better balance and co-ordination scores, suggesting housework can help to protect people from falls in old age – a common cause of hospitalisation.
The authors of the study, which was led by the University of Singapore, said more research was needed to establish a firm link between household jobs and healthy aging.
But they suggested that chores require mental sharpness and are a good indicator of being able to live independently.
Lead author Professor Shiou-Liang Wee told the British Medical Journal: ‘After adjusting for other types of regular physical activity, the results showed that housework was associated with sharper mental abilities and better physical capacity. But only among the older age group.
‘Our study suggests that a combination of light and heavy housework is associated with higher cognitive function, specifically in attention and memory domains, among older adults.’
Thousands of dead sea creatures are washing up on UK beaches
Sharon Bell, a Marske-by-the-Sea resident, told CNN she walked the beach near her home every day and had seen a “steady build-up of soft crustaceans,” in the past few weeks.
Bell said she went to the beach on Monday morning and was shocked to see “the seaweed was piled high to waist level, but it was absolutely full, and I mean thousands of dead crabs and alive crabs, all varieties, lobsters as well.”
She told CNN she visited the beach again Wednesday, only to find the smell was “absolutely terrible,” as the piles of dead crabs began to “decompose down.”
The UK’s Environment Agency told CNN it was working with the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture and North Eastern Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority to investigate why hundreds of dead crabs have washed up along the shore in the Tees Estuary and neighboring beaches.
“Samples of water, sediment, mussel and crab have been collected,” and have been sent for analysis to “consider whether a pollution incident could have contributed to the deaths of the animals,” the Environment Agency spokesperson told CNN.
Jacob Young, who represents the seaside town of Redcar in the UK Parliament, tweeted Sunday that the developments along the coats were “deeply worrying.”
Bell said she and her husband spent over four hours trying to put as many of the crabs that were still alive and trapped in the seaweed back into the water.
“It’s just devastating to see them laying there,” she said. “It’s saddening because it is such a beautiful area to live in.”
Bell added she hoped locals would get answers. “If it is a man-made incident and we’ve actually done it then obviously we need to make sure it’s not going to happen again,” she said.
Washing machines and libraries: What life is like in Indian farmers’ protest camps
In November, farmers infuriated by new agricultural reforms drove in tractor conveys from around India to set up multiple blockades at the city’s borders.
This camp at Ghazipur on the border between Delhi and the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh is one of three major temporary settlements on the outskirts of the capital. Almost everyone here is from neighboring Uttar Pradesh, but farmers at other camps have come from states including Haryana and Punjab — the latter is known as the “bread basket of India” due to its large food production industry.
Around 10,000 people — mainly men, both young and old — are stationed at Ghazipur alone, according to camp leaders, although the number fluctuates from day-to-day as farmers split their time between their homes and the camp. Many have family members minding their farms, allowing them to stay in the capital for long stretches.
The farmers face challenges — the cold winter temperatures, clashes with police and security forces, and restrictions on their internet access, among others. Despite that, farmers say they have no plans to leave until the government overturns the laws.
A makeshift town
Here at Ghazipur, the camp hums along like a well-oiled machine.
By night, the farmers who choose to stay asleep in brightly colored tents pitched on the road, or on mattresses underneath their tractors (and in hundreds of vans and trucks). By day, many help run the camp.
All their basic needs are catered for. There are portable toilets — although the stench makes it unpleasant to get too close. There’s also a supply store which has plastic crates of shampoo sachets and tissues — these supplies, like all those in the camp, were donated either by farmers or supporters of the farmers’ cause.
Water is brought in from nearby civic stations. Jagjeet Singh, a 26-year-old from Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, uses his tractor to bring back 4,000 liter (1,057 gallon) tanks of water each day (he brings in about 10 to 12 such tanks a day) that can be used for drinking, bathing, and cleaning. Some men stand by the tank washing the grimy black mud from the wet road off their shoes and legs.
Meals are cooked over a small gas fire in a cast iron pan held up by fire-blackened bricks, and provided for free from inside of a tent that’s been constructed from bamboo poles and plastic. A farmer wearing blue medical gloves scoops pakora — a kind of spiced fritter — into bowls for farmers who are wrapped in scarves, jackets and hats to brave against Delhi’s winter chill. Nearby, cauliflower and potatoes burst out of burlap sacks.
Kuldeep Singh, a 36-year-old farmer, helps to prepare the meals. He came here over 60 days ago. Like many others, his family are helping cover his work back home, although he goes back and forth between the camp and his farm.
“Be it the work back home or the camp, both are equally important,” he said.
Himanshi Rana, a 20-year-old volunteer operating the camp’s makeshift medical center, has also been here for more than two months. She helps treat people’s diseases, and tended to farmers who were hit by tear gas during violent demonstrations on January 26 — India’s Republic Day. On that day, thousands of protesters stormed New Delhi’s historic Red Fort as police used tear gas and batons against the demonstrators. One protester died, although protesters and police disagree over the cause of death.
“My father is a farmer, I am a farmer’s daughter. Me being here is inevitable,” she said. “We are here to serve the people … we will stay put until the government agrees to the demands.”
One thing the protesters are not asking for are face masks. Despite India reporting the most coronavirus cases of any country in the world bar the United States, no farmers at Ghazipur are wearing face coverings.
Farmers at Ghazipur say they’re not worried about coronavirus — according to Rana, they believe that they have strong immunity from their physical labor, meaning they’re not scared of catching it.
What life is like in the camps
The mood of the camp is joyful, more like a festival than a demonstration.
The camp itself is a kind of protest — the farmers are blocking the road to help bring awareness to their cause. It’s also the base for demonstrations, including the rally that turned violent on Republic Day.
For many, there are hours of downtime when they’re not helping run the camp or holding demonstrations. A group of men sit in a circle smoking hookah pipes, while others play cards on a blanket. More than a dozen men sit or stand on a red tractor, playing a pro-farmer song from the speakers as they ride through the camp. There’s a library for the youngsters that includes books on revolutions in multiple languages.
Every now and again, a group breaks into a chant. “We’ll be here until the government gives in!”
As the water collector Jagjeet Singh puts it: “I don’t feel like I am away from home.”
And there are people besides the protesters, too. Young children dash through the camp, trying to scavenge things to sell elsewhere. Vendors from nearby villages spread out pro-farmer badges on blankets and curious onlookers from nearby areas come to see what’s going on.
But all this belies the serious reason why they’re there — that for many this is a matter of life or death.
Farmers say the new laws aimed at bringing more market freedom to the industry will make it easier for corporations to exploit agricultural workers — and leave them struggling to meet the minimum price that they were guaranteed for certain crops under the previous rules.
And while the mood within the camp is calm and relaxed, there’s a constant reminder that not everyone supports the farmers’ fight.
Large barricades erected by the police and topped with barbed wire stand a few hundred meters from the hubbub of camp life, hemming the farmers in and keeping them from encroaching any closer to the center of Delhi. Security forces line the sides of the camp, keeping watch for any trouble, although they have not tried to clear the camp — likely because it would be politically unpopular.
The farmers say the barricades make them seem like outsiders — like they are foreigners in their own land who don’t belong here.
“The government is treating us like we are Chinese, sitting on the other side of the fence,” Kuldeep Singh said, referring to the tense border dispute currently taking place between India and China in the Himalayas.
Difficulty for protesters
As the months have worn on, protesting has become harder.
The winter temperatures have dropped to below 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Farenheit) at night. And tensions have ramped up during the protests. Last week, internet access was blocked in several districts of a state bordering India’s capital following violent clashes between police and farmers there protesting the controversial agricultural reforms.
The government has been criticized not only for the controversial farm laws themselves, but also how it has handled the demonstrations. At the end of January, India’s main opposition party, the Congress Party, and 15 other opposition parties, said Prime Minister Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party have been “arrogant, adamant and undemocratic in their response.”
“(Hundreds and thousands) of farmers have been … braving biting cold and heavy rain for the last 64 days for their rights and justice,” they wrote in a joint statement. “The government remains unmoved and has responded with water cannons, tear gas and lathi charges. Every effort has been made to discredit a legitimate mass movement through government sponsored disinformation campaign.”
According to Samyukta Kisan Morcha, the umbrella body of protesting farmers, at least 147 farmers have died during the course of the monthslong protests from a range of causes, including suicide, road accidents and exposure to cold weather. Authorities have not given an official figure on protester deaths.
Nevertheless, farmers are continuing to arrive at the camps, Samyukta Kisan Morcha said earlier this week.
“Typically these village groups work against each other but this time they have all united for the collective fight,” said Paramjeet Singh Katyal, a spokesperson for Samyukta Kisan Morcha.
What happens next
Protests are fairly common in India, the world’s largest democracy. And it’s not the first time that large protests have rocked the country — in 2019, a controversial citizenship law that excludes Muslims prompted mass demonstrations.
But these protests are a particular challenge for Modi.
Agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for 58% of India’s 1.3 billion population, making farmers the biggest voter block in the country. Angering the farmers could lose Modi a significant chunk of votes at the next general election in 2024. Modi and his government continue to insist that they are supporting farmers, and called the new laws as a “watershed moment” which will ensure a complete transformation of the agriculture sector. Besides calling the move long overdue, Modi has not said why he opted to introduce these measures during the pandemic, which has caused India to suffer its first recession in decades.
In a statement issued this week, the Indian government said that the protests “must be seen in the context of India’s democratic ethos and polity, and the ongoing efforts of the government and the concerned farmer groups to resolve the impasse,” and that certain measures, such as the temporary internet block, were “undertaken to prevent further violence.”
The camps have also created a headache for nearby commuters and trucks bringing food into Delhi — people who would have traveled on the expressway at Ghazipur are forced to take different routes, sometimes doubling their travel time.
But the farmers are showing no interest in backing down.
Rounds of talks have failed to make any headway. Although the Supreme Court put three contentious farm orders on hold last month and ordered the formation of a four-member mediation committee to help the parties negotiate, farmers’ leaders have rejected any court-appointed mediation committee.
Last month, central government offered to suspend the laws for 1.5 years — but to farmers, all of this is not far enough.
Sanjit Baliyan, 25, has been at the camp for over a month, working at the supply tent. He points out that farmers have done a lot for Modi’s government, only for Modi to introduce a law that removes any minimum prices for their stocks.
“We haven’t spoken against the government for last seven years. But, if we are at receiving end, we will have to speak,” he said.
Some, like 50-year-old farmer Babu Ram, want the protests to end. “A prolonged protest is neither good for the farmers nor for the government. The protest, if it’s stretched, will create a ruckus.”
But he added: “This protest will only end once the government agrees to our demands … we have to stay here till the end.”
While Kuldeep Singh agrees that there’s hardship — farmers’ households have cut their own consumption to contribute to the protest camps — he says farmers will only leave once the laws are repealed. “We will sit here for the next three years. We will sit till the elections, till the laws are scrapped.”
Jouranlist Rishabh Pratap and Esha Mitra contributed to this story from New Delhi.