7 ms·

India's holiest river Ganges is swollen with Covid victims

Clewza313 5y ago
FWIW, even in normal times it's fairly common to "bury" dead people by putting them in Ganges. (Cremation is preferred, but can be prohibitively expensive for the poor.) Varanasi in particular is notorious for this. For avoidance of doubt, it's clear that situation right now is much worse than usual, but it's also not quite as unusual as if we had bodies floating down (say) the Hudson or Thames.
- truth_ 5y ago
  No it is not. Used to be true a century ago, to a lesser extent- half a century ago. Not anymore.
  - Clewza313 5y ago
    From the friendly article: > But many communities follow what is known as "Jal Pravah" - the practice of floating in the river the bodies of children, unwed girls, or those who die from infectious diseases or snake bites. > Many poor people also cannot afford cremation, and so they wrap the body in white muslin and push it into the water. Sometimes, the bodies are tied to stones to ensure they remain submerged, but as many are floated without weights. In normal times, corpses floating in the Ganges are not an uncommon sight. You can also find plenty of gruesome footage of decomposing corpses in the Ganges near Varanasi, shot by recent tourists.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      > You can also find plenty of gruesome footage of decomposing corpses in the Ganges near Varanasi, shot by recent tourists. To be clear, it’s the footage that had been shot by tourists, not the corpses, right?
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Per TFA: > Traditionally, Hindus cremate their dead. But many communities follow what is known as "Jal Pravah" - the practice of floating in the river the bodies of children, unwed girls, or those who die from infectious diseases or snake bites. > Many poor people also cannot afford cremation, and so they wrap the body in white muslin and push it into the water. Sometimes, the bodies are tied to stones to ensure they remain submerged, but as many are floated without weights. In normal times, corpses floating in the Ganges are not an uncommon sight.
    - truth_ 5y ago
      For the non-Indians, the above is very very very uncommon. These are spread after the incidents to save face.
      - nandhinianand 5y ago
        Exactly, they were an ancient practice. while i wouldn't be surprised to see it practiced in remote and poor places, it would've been a negligible minority before COVID-19 times. This framing is just narrative mitigation/down-playing of the magnitude. (May be not deliberately, just misinformation from the sources, but nevertheless.)
  - ranjitcool1 5y ago
    It very much is. If you don’t know then Google it.
- ranjitcool1 5y ago
  That’s correct
- blackoil 5y ago
  It is not common on this scale. 2 to 3 magnitude more bodies are floating in rivers. So while 1 body in 15 days is 'common' it is not same as 15 bodies a day.
Flex247A 5y ago
It's getting harder to get an empty vaccine slot. I think there is a huge shortage of vaccines in my state (UP). Fortunately, I got my first shot of vaccine yesterday. At the vaccination center, I saw people breaking the line, taking pictures of their relatives getting the vaccine, and in general not maintaining a safe distance. I guess many handled their ID cards and tokens without sanitizing their hands... It's heartbreaking to see people suffer due to this pandemic. Reminds me of the privilege I have.
- wayoverthecloud 5y ago
  Is the vaccine supposed to work for the second variant of the virus that causes drop in oxygen level?
  - astrange 5y ago
    All the vaccines work for variants - COVID is not actually that good at mutating, it's not the flu. Some work better than others, but there's no reason to skip one because it appears you can mix them with no side effects.
hangonhn 5y ago
What is the best way for someone in the US to donate to help with the situation in India? I'm not Indian so I don't know much about charities in India but news like this is just heartbreaking and I want to do my minuscule part in helping. Thanks in advance.
- praving5 5y ago
  You can see plenty of fundraising options at https://milaap.org/ https://milaap.org/ These are verified volunteers directly working at the local level.
  - ganeshkrishnan 5y ago
    Thanks for it. I setup monthly payments for some volunteers. Some of them seem to be individuals. How can I verify that these people are kosher?
- random314 5y ago
  https://www.khalsaaid.org/ https://www.khalsaaid.org/ this is a good organization. Avoid donating to PM CARES FUND. It is a private entity, not a government fund, that has collected almost 2B$ and as far as I can tell had spent only 30M$ to set up a couple of oxygen plants, most of which are not functional. Another charity I would avoid is Sewa international, which is the charity arm of right wing, nationalist and militant organization RSS. Indias current party in power BJP is an offshoot of RSS.
  - ganeshkrishnan 5y ago
    >Avoid donating to PM CARES FUND THIS. I won't speculate where the money goes. But this fund is held in a secret account, no authority is allowed to audit and no one is allowed to inquire where the money is being spent.
  - amriksohata 5y ago
    Avoid Khalsa Aid, they are being investigated for links with terror organisations https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/nia-examines-khalsa-aid-functionary-in-case-against-sikhs-for-justice/article33594744.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/nia-examines-khalsa-a... Sewa has no link with RSS or BJP, thats just nonsense. They are worldwide and non-political unlike Ravi Singhs Khalsa Aid which is openly political.
ganeshkrishnan 5y ago
The number of fatalities is 10x-100x more than what is published officially. Most people died at homes due to them being rural and all hospitals working at capacity. At government hospitals, you have to be tested and be covid positive to be listed as covid death. Private hospitals in rural areas simply don't send the stats back. I don't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives. They said injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere and this is probably the price to pay for letting Modi run his private circus of his kumbh mela and election rallies. The strain has escaped India and we don't know how it will affect the rest of the world. All his political life, him and his supporters cried for statues and temples and now they stand on the ashes of million dead people and all they can hear is a deafening silence of their gods.
- majjgepolja 5y ago
  Religion being the opium for the masses Without Exception.
- 0xFFFE 5y ago
  who is stopping you from voting him out? It's a fucking democracy last I checked.
- cscurmudgeon 5y ago
  Also, India had the world's largest protests by farmers protesting against removal of subsidies. https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/06/opinions/india-farmer-protests-mandeep-rai-dhillon/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/06/opinions/india-farmer-protest... > The number of fatalities is 10x-100x more than what is published Source?
  - robbiep 5y ago
    I'm just trying to understand how insensitive it is to comment on a thread where OP is clearly someone who has either suffered loss or has an entire network suffering loss, and then go full strong systemiser and ask for a reference. The absurdity of asking is even stronger when almost any understanding of the situation on the ground in India would mean an understanding that there is widespread and systemic problems with data collection in India, essentially as there has been throughout the pandemic globally, reflecting the difficulty of determining infection rates, CFR vs IFR and deaths in a testing scarcity environment. I don't know for sure but I would anticipate that there is a good chance that many indian deaths are never registered which would make other post pandemic methods of determining true 'excess mortality' very difficult. The particular irony in this whole post extending from your question being that the BBC itself, in the linked article, in the second paragraph, states that 'experts say the real death toll is several times higher'. Now that isn't your 1-2 magnitudes but you don't have to travel far from there to get those types of sources, but depending on how strong-systemiser you go on requiring hard numbers, the fact is no-one will ever know because no one is counting
maaand 5y ago
BBC is mostly fake, Like any other US based news media. In hindu tradition, people cremate and spread the ashes in Ganges.
- kwonkicker 5y ago
  Do you mean to tell that the British Broadcasting Center is in fact a US company?!
  - maaand 5y ago
    look up: simile, figure of speech
rebuilder 5y ago
A body floating ashore is the start of a western detective story. What a different situation, to just cremate them. Can you really just murder someone, dump the body in the Ganges and have the police dispose of the body for you? It seems like that must happen if so many dead are in the river.
qrybam 5y ago
Just to put some numbers on this, have a look at the “deaths/1M pop” column in this table: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries It’s clear that the official numbers are almost an order of magnitude out vs countries that do more testing (e.g. US). If you take the official global average death rate of 2% and apply it to India’s case count you’ll get roughly double the number of officially reported deaths. The news coming out of India is tragic and given the lack of infrastructure in rural areas and the shortage of medical supplies we keep hearing about the “1 order magnitude out” is starting to look like a lower bound.
yashness 5y ago
BBC is well behind India to malice its image & ruling party, and the authors writing are affiliated with opposition party. Don't believe any negativity this so called famous broadcaster is spreading.
rcshubhadeep 5y ago
What is funny is that there are still people who can not see what this Evil is doing to the country
gshakir 5y ago
Why is this flagged? This news has been covered extensively before this BBC article. One of the downstream states had put a net to prevent those victims washing up to their shores. Looks like there is an effort to silence this news. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/coronavirus-net-across-ganges-to-catch-india-covid-19-corpses-2440211 https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/coronavirus-net-across-gange... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bodies-found-floating-ganges-india-s-covid-death-toll-passes-n1267059 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bodies-found-floating-gan...

FWIW, even in normal times it's fairly common to "bury" dead people by putting them in Ganges. (Cremation is preferred, but can be prohibitively expensive for the poor.) Varanasi in particular is notorious for this. For avoidance of doubt, it's clear that situation right now is much worse than usual, but it's also not quite as unusual as if we had bodies floating down (say) the Hudson or Thames.

truth_ 5y ago
No it is not. Used to be true a century ago, to a lesser extent- half a century ago. Not anymore.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  From the friendly article: > But many communities follow what is known as "Jal Pravah" - the practice of floating in the river the bodies of children, unwed girls, or those who die from infectious diseases or snake bites. > Many poor people also cannot afford cremation, and so they wrap the body in white muslin and push it into the water. Sometimes, the bodies are tied to stones to ensure they remain submerged, but as many are floated without weights. In normal times, corpses floating in the Ganges are not an uncommon sight. You can also find plenty of gruesome footage of decomposing corpses in the Ganges near Varanasi, shot by recent tourists.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    > You can also find plenty of gruesome footage of decomposing corpses in the Ganges near Varanasi, shot by recent tourists. To be clear, it’s the footage that had been shot by tourists, not the corpses, right?
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Per TFA: > Traditionally, Hindus cremate their dead. But many communities follow what is known as "Jal Pravah" - the practice of floating in the river the bodies of children, unwed girls, or those who die from infectious diseases or snake bites. > Many poor people also cannot afford cremation, and so they wrap the body in white muslin and push it into the water. Sometimes, the bodies are tied to stones to ensure they remain submerged, but as many are floated without weights. In normal times, corpses floating in the Ganges are not an uncommon sight.
  - truth_ 5y ago
    For the non-Indians, the above is very very very uncommon. These are spread after the incidents to save face.
    - nandhinianand 5y ago
      Exactly, they were an ancient practice. while i wouldn't be surprised to see it practiced in remote and poor places, it would've been a negligible minority before COVID-19 times. This framing is just narrative mitigation/down-playing of the magnitude. (May be not deliberately, just misinformation from the sources, but nevertheless.)
- ranjitcool1 5y ago
  It very much is. If you don’t know then Google it.
ranjitcool1 5y ago
That’s correct
blackoil 5y ago
It is not common on this scale. 2 to 3 magnitude more bodies are floating in rivers. So while 1 body in 15 days is 'common' it is not same as 15 bodies a day.

Flex247A 5y ago

It's getting harder to get an empty vaccine slot. I think there is a huge shortage of vaccines in my state (UP). Fortunately, I got my first shot of vaccine yesterday. At the vaccination center, I saw people breaking the line, taking pictures of their relatives getting the vaccine, and in general not maintaining a safe distance. I guess many handled their ID cards and tokens without sanitizing their hands... It's heartbreaking to see people suffer due to this pandemic. Reminds me of the privilege I have.

wayoverthecloud 5y ago
Is the vaccine supposed to work for the second variant of the virus that causes drop in oxygen level?
- astrange 5y ago
  All the vaccines work for variants - COVID is not actually that good at mutating, it's not the flu. Some work better than others, but there's no reason to skip one because it appears you can mix them with no side effects.

hangonhn 5y ago

What is the best way for someone in the US to donate to help with the situation in India? I'm not Indian so I don't know much about charities in India but news like this is just heartbreaking and I want to do my minuscule part in helping. Thanks in advance.

praving5 5y ago
You can see plenty of fundraising options at https://milaap.org/ https://milaap.org/ These are verified volunteers directly working at the local level.
- ganeshkrishnan 5y ago
  Thanks for it. I setup monthly payments for some volunteers. Some of them seem to be individuals. How can I verify that these people are kosher?
random314 5y ago
https://www.khalsaaid.org/ https://www.khalsaaid.org/ this is a good organization. Avoid donating to PM CARES FUND. It is a private entity, not a government fund, that has collected almost 2B$ and as far as I can tell had spent only 30M$ to set up a couple of oxygen plants, most of which are not functional. Another charity I would avoid is Sewa international, which is the charity arm of right wing, nationalist and militant organization RSS. Indias current party in power BJP is an offshoot of RSS.
- ganeshkrishnan 5y ago
  >Avoid donating to PM CARES FUND THIS. I won't speculate where the money goes. But this fund is held in a secret account, no authority is allowed to audit and no one is allowed to inquire where the money is being spent.
- amriksohata 5y ago
  Avoid Khalsa Aid, they are being investigated for links with terror organisations https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/nia-examines-khalsa-aid-functionary-in-case-against-sikhs-for-justice/article33594744.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/nia-examines-khalsa-a... Sewa has no link with RSS or BJP, thats just nonsense. They are worldwide and non-political unlike Ravi Singhs Khalsa Aid which is openly political.

ganeshkrishnan 5y ago

The number of fatalities is 10x-100x more than what is published officially. Most people died at homes due to them being rural and all hospitals working at capacity. At government hospitals, you have to be tested and be covid positive to be listed as covid death. Private hospitals in rural areas simply don't send the stats back. I don't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives. They said injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere and this is probably the price to pay for letting Modi run his private circus of his kumbh mela and election rallies. The strain has escaped India and we don't know how it will affect the rest of the world. All his political life, him and his supporters cried for statues and temples and now they stand on the ashes of million dead people and all they can hear is a deafening silence of their gods.

majjgepolja 5y ago
Religion being the opium for the masses Without Exception.
0xFFFE 5y ago
who is stopping you from voting him out? It's a fucking democracy last I checked.
cscurmudgeon 5y ago
Also, India had the world's largest protests by farmers protesting against removal of subsidies. https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/06/opinions/india-farmer-protests-mandeep-rai-dhillon/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/06/opinions/india-farmer-protest... > The number of fatalities is 10x-100x more than what is published Source?
- robbiep 5y ago
  I'm just trying to understand how insensitive it is to comment on a thread where OP is clearly someone who has either suffered loss or has an entire network suffering loss, and then go full strong systemiser and ask for a reference. The absurdity of asking is even stronger when almost any understanding of the situation on the ground in India would mean an understanding that there is widespread and systemic problems with data collection in India, essentially as there has been throughout the pandemic globally, reflecting the difficulty of determining infection rates, CFR vs IFR and deaths in a testing scarcity environment. I don't know for sure but I would anticipate that there is a good chance that many indian deaths are never registered which would make other post pandemic methods of determining true 'excess mortality' very difficult. The particular irony in this whole post extending from your question being that the BBC itself, in the linked article, in the second paragraph, states that 'experts say the real death toll is several times higher'. Now that isn't your 1-2 magnitudes but you don't have to travel far from there to get those types of sources, but depending on how strong-systemiser you go on requiring hard numbers, the fact is no-one will ever know because no one is counting

maaand 5y ago

BBC is mostly fake, Like any other US based news media. In hindu tradition, people cremate and spread the ashes in Ganges.

kwonkicker 5y ago
Do you mean to tell that the British Broadcasting Center is in fact a US company?!
- maaand 5y ago
  look up: simile, figure of speech

rebuilder 5y ago

A body floating ashore is the start of a western detective story. What a different situation, to just cremate them. Can you really just murder someone, dump the body in the Ganges and have the police dispose of the body for you? It seems like that must happen if so many dead are in the river.

qrybam 5y ago

Just to put some numbers on this, have a look at the “deaths/1M pop” column in this table: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries It’s clear that the official numbers are almost an order of magnitude out vs countries that do more testing (e.g. US). If you take the official global average death rate of 2% and apply it to India’s case count you’ll get roughly double the number of officially reported deaths. The news coming out of India is tragic and given the lack of infrastructure in rural areas and the shortage of medical supplies we keep hearing about the “1 order magnitude out” is starting to look like a lower bound.

yashness 5y ago

BBC is well behind India to malice its image & ruling party, and the authors writing are affiliated with opposition party. Don't believe any negativity this so called famous broadcaster is spreading.

rcshubhadeep 5y ago

What is funny is that there are still people who can not see what this Evil is doing to the country

gshakir 5y ago

Why is this flagged? This news has been covered extensively before this BBC article. One of the downstream states had put a net to prevent those victims washing up to their shores. Looks like there is an effort to silence this news. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/coronavirus-net-across-ganges-to-catch-india-covid-19-corpses-2440211 https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/coronavirus-net-across-gange... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bodies-found-floating-ganges-india-s-covid-death-toll-passes-n1267059 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bodies-found-floating-gan...