Jon Stewart Goes All-In on Wuhan ‘Lab Leak’ Theory

Fifteen months after he abruptly left the Ed Sullivan Theater and began internet hosting A Late Show from first his bathtub and later a small workplace, Stephen Colbert made his triumphant return Monday evening, with a completely vaccinated viewers of their seats and his previous good friend Jon Stewart by his facet.

After strolling on stage—in pants!—to an exuberant standing ovation and “Stephen! Stephen! Stephen!” chant, Colbert grinned extensively as he embraced his band chief Jon Batiste and welcomed viewers to THE Late Show for the primary time since COVID-19 upended the whole lot final March. “We never really left, but we certainly weren’t here,” he defined, evaluating it to the “first day back at school.”

“I am so really happy!” Stewart mentioned when he joined Colbert on the desk. “And I know we’re all vaccinated and I’m not going to get COVID, but I’m going to get something. These people did not take good care of themselves during the pandemic.”

Asked how he’s feeling concerning the state of the scientific response to COVID-19, Stewart added, “So, I will say this—and I honestly mean this—I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science. Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science.”

Taken aback, Colbert requested his good friend, “Do you mean perhaps there’s a chance that this was created in a lab?” referring to the continuing investigation into the so-called “lab leak” concept that began as a right-wing conspiracy.

“A chance?” Stewart requested. “Oh my god, there’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China, what do we do? Oh, you know who we could ask? The Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab. The disease is the same name as the lab. That’s just a little too weird!”

Then, after they requested the scientists who labored in that lab how the pandemic may need began, he joked that their response was, “Uhh, a pangolin kissed a turtle?” or “Maybe a bat flew into the cloaca of a turkey and then it sneezed into my chili and now we all have coronavirus?”

As an analogy, he added, “There’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania, what do you think happened? I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel made it with a cocoa bean. Or it’s the fucking chocolate factory!”

“That could very well be,” Colbert allowed, noting that Dr. Anthony Fauci amongst others have mentioned that it could be investigated. But he additionally pushed again, telling Stewart, “It could be possible that they have the lab in Wuhan to study the novel coronavirus diseases because in Wuhan there are a lot of coronavirus diseases because of the bat population there.”

But Stewart didn’t wish to hear any of it, repeatedly making his level earlier than Colbert lastly requested him, “And how long have you worked for Senator Ron Johnson?”

“This is not a conspiracy!” Stewart shot again. “But this is the problem with science. Science is incredible, but they don’t know when to stop and no one in the room with those cats ever goes, ‘I don’t know if we should do that.’ They’re like, ‘curiosity killed the cat, so let’s kill 10,000 cats to find out why.’”

When he realized he could have gone too far, Stewart walked down stage and spoke immediately into the digicam: “I have been alone so long. And when I realized that the laboratory was having the same name—first name and last name—of the evil that had been plaguing us, I thought to myself, that’s fucked up.”

After a break, given the prospect to maneuver on, Stewart doubled down one final time. “Can I say this about scientists?” he requested. “I love them and they do such good work but they are going to kill us all.”

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