'Everyone Here Is Alone'

CICADA CUISINE TUDOR QUEEN REMAKING FARM COUNTRY CHEFS WHO TAKE ANNE BOLEYN’S SHIPPING HUBS SPROUT INSECTS SERIOUSLY LIFE, REIMAGINED IN RURAL PENNSYLVANIA BACK PAGE | LIVING PAGE 14 | CULTURE PAGE 8 | BUSINESS .. INTERNATIONAL EDITION | WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16, 2021 Faith in U.S. China expert as a savior calls Covid to the world lab theory baseless Her country’s secrecy makes it hard to verify Michelle Goldberg Wuhan virologist’s claim BY AMY QIN AND CHRIS BUCKLEY OPINION To a growing chorus of American poli- ticians and scientists, she is the key to In her 2019 memoir, “The Education of whether the world will ever learn an Idealist,” Samantha Power, who whether the virus behind the devastat- emigrated from Ireland as a child, de- ing Covid-19 pandemic escaped from a scribed how she knew, even before Chinese lab. To the Chinese government being naturalized, that she had become ‘Everyone here is alone’ and public, she is a hero in the country’s an American. “I now thought like an success in curbing the epidemic and is a American, reacting to problems in the victim of malicious conspiracy theories. world — like the Bosnia war — by ask- Shi Zhengli, a top Chinese virologist, ing myself, ‘What, if anything, can we, is once again at the center of clashing America, do about it?’” narratives about her research on co- That question has animated Power’s ronaviruses at a state lab in Wuhan, the epic career, which has stretched from city where the pandemic first emerged. war correspondent to United Nations The idea that the virus may have es- ambassador to, now, head of the United caped from a lab had long been widely States Agency for International Devel- dismissed by scientists as implausible opment, the govern- and shunned by others for its connec- Can ment agency devoted tion with former President Donald J. Samantha to foreign aid. It was a Trump. But fresh scrutiny from the Bi- question that a lot of den administration and calls for greater Power, the liberal-minded peo- candor from prominent scientists have new head of ple asked themselves brought the theory back to the fore. U.S. foreign in the 1990s. Back Scientists generally agree that there aid, make then, elite conven- is still no direct evidence to support the America tional wisdom held lab leak theory. But more of them now good again? that America’s failure say that the hypothesis was dismissed to try to stop the 1994 too hastily, without a thorough investi- genocide in Rwanda gation, and they point to a number of un- was a moral catastro- settling questions. phe; it was partly the shame of that Some scientists say Dr. Shi conducted episode that led Bill Clinton to eventu- risky experiments with bat coronavi- ally intervene in Kosovo. ruses in labs that were not safe enough. With her Pulitzer Prize-winning 2002 Others want clarity on reports, citing book, “A Problem From Hell: America U.S. intelligence, suggesting that there and the Age of Genocide,” Power be- were early infections of Covid-19 among came the poster child for liberal inter- several employees of the Wuhan Insti- ventionism, the conviction that it was tute of Virology. America’s responsibility to prevent Dr. Shi has denied these accusations atrocities abroad. Even after liberal and finds herself defending the reputa- interventionism was misused to sell the tion of her lab and, by extension, that of Iraq war, which Power opposed, she her country. Reached on her cellphone retained faith in the humanitarian two weeks ago, Dr. Shi said at first that possibilities of an assertive American she preferred not to speak directly with foreign policy. reporters, citing her institute’s policies. Such faith used to dominate both Yet she could barely contain her frustra- parties, but in recent years it has tion. eroded. Conventional wisdom now “How on earth can I offer up evidence holds that America’s 2011 intervention for something where there is no evi- in Libya, which Power supported, was a dence?” she said, her voice rising in an- strategic catastrophe. The Republican ger during the brief, unscheduled con- Party largely fell in line behind Donald PHOTOGRAPHS BY ATUL LOKE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES versation. “I don’t know how the world Trump’s isolationist dictator worship. Above, Mukesh Diwakar, center, and his family at home in Nangli Vihar, a suburb of New Delhi. Mr. Diwakar has been out of work for almost two months; top left, Dayanand has come to this, constantly pouring On much of the left, America’s colonial- Kaushik, a Hindu priest who oversees cremations, said his phone rings constantly; top right, the neighborhood street market attracts fewer buyers after Covid-19 swept through. filth on an innocent scientist,” she wrote ist malevolence is taken for granted. in a text message. Voters are understandably consumed In a rare interview over email, she de- by domestic crises. We live in an age of and isolation — and often after tremen- nounced as baseless suspicions about a BY KARAN DEEP SINGH How fear, neglect and Covid-19 tore apart horrors, including China’s genocide of AND ATUL LOKE dous loss. leak, as well as claims that several of her the Uyghurs and mass atrocities and When Ms. Asha got sick last month, colleagues may have been ill before the starvation in the Tigray region of Ethi- Asha lit up the neighborhood. The 54- a single New Delhi neighborhood her son, Pankaj Rajput, spent about outbreak. opia, but few people expect the United year-old woman, who insisted that peo- 400,000 rupees, or more than $5,000, on The speculation boils down to one States to do much about it. ple call her by one name, took care of neighborhood is not the poorest, the People shut their doors, shattering her treatment. He arranged a hospital central question: Did Dr. Shi’s lab hold President Biden, however, is still a neighbors when they got sick. She worst-hit or the most crowded in the city. many of the relationships that make up a bed, oxygen, medicine and plasma, of- any source of the new coronavirus be- GOLDBERG, PAGE 11 planted trees up and down the block. It could have been any street in New neighborhood. ten paying black market rates of double fore the pandemic erupted? Dr. Shi’s an- She was friendly with just about every- Delhi. Now New Delhi is starting to reopen or triple the usual price. His desperation swer is an emphatic no. The New York Times publishes opinion body at the local market. But as the virus ricocheted from after one of the world’s deadliest out- was all too common in a time when hos- But China’s refusal to allow an inde- from a wide range of perspectives in When Covid-19 swept through Ms. house to house, it did more than kill. breaks. We spent a week with the resi- pitals were filled up. pendent investigation into her lab, or to hopes of promoting constructive debate Asha’s New Delhi suburb, Nangli Vihar, With hospitals full and the government dents of a few close-knit blocks in Nangli She had received her first inoculation share data on its research, make it diffi- about consequential questions. the death toll didn’t set any records. The largely absent, fear began to spread. Vihar as they begin to emerge from fear INDIA, PAGE 5 LAB LEAK, PAGE 4 He lived the blues. And still wails. sations, often in unglamorous circum- An American mainstay stances, his entire life. His first guitar was a diddley bow he made from hay is telling his story to a wire nailed to the side of his childhood Stories that stay with you. bigger audience at last home. Much later, Rolling Stone chris- tened him the King of the Chitlin Circuit, Experience the power of The New York Times in print. Subscribe to the International Edition. BY BRETT ANDERSON an acknowledgment of the years he spent touring the network of small clubs nytimes.com/powerinprint The air was thick with termites when for Black performers and audiences, Bobby Rush stepped onto an outdoor mainly in the South, in a 1973 Silver Ea- stage in New Orleans for one of his first gle Trailways bus he customized him- live performances in over a year — an self. uncharacteristically long break, the re- On the heels of winning his second sult of pandemic shutdowns, in a career Grammy in March, and on the verge of that began in the wake of World War II. publishing a memoir in June, Rush, now It was early May, and the swarming in his 80s, is enjoying a moment of rec- was so bad that the blues musician wove ognition. A lesser-known figure com- the insects into his lyrics: “Somebody pared to many of the luminaries he has come get these damn bugs.” He later considered friends and mentors, includ- moved to the ground in front of the ing Elmore James, Muddy Waters and stage, determined to continue his show B.B. King, Rush is one of the last remain- in the dark, beyond the reach of the ter- ing Black blues musicians who experi- mite-attracting lights. enced the horror of Jim Crow-era racism “I never seen anything like that be- and participated, however tangentially, fore,” Rush said by phone a week later, in the genre’s postwar flowering. from his home in Jackson, Miss. “I could IMANI KHAYYAM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES “I may be the oldest blues singer hardly play my guitar.” The musician Bobby Rush is enjoying a moment of recognition on the heels of winning around, me and Buddy Guy,” he said in Rush has relied on practical improvi- a second Grammy.

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