Jon Stewart Surprisingly Endorses Coronavirus Lab Leak Theory

Former host of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart, shocked viewers by promoting the theory that COVID-19 was created in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV): “The disease is the same name as the lab.”

During an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” the political satirist remarked, “I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science because science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science.”

Taken aback, Colbert tried to walk back the commentary. “Do you mean perhaps there’s a chance that this was created in a lab,” he asked. “There’s an investigation?”   

“A chance?!” Stewart snarked. “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, don’t you think?”

“Then they ask the scientists ‘so wait a minute, you work at the Wuhan respiratory coronavirus lab, how did this happen?’ and they’re like, ‘a penguin kissed a turtle?’” Stewart mocked. “Maybe a bat flew into the cloaca of a turkey and then it sneezed into my chili and now we all have coronavirus.”

Colbert tried to reign his guest in, but Stewart excitedly jumped to his feet to describe a hypothetical scenario of a chocolate outbreak in Hersey, Penn.  

“‘Oh my God, there’s been an outbreak of chocolaty goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened?’” He posited. “‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean.’ Or it’s the f—ing chocolate factory! Maybe that’s it!”  

Colbert agreed that the theory should “definitely be investigated,” but Stewart was quick to cut him off. “Stop with the logic and people and things,” he replied. “The name of the disease is on the building.”

Colbert attempted to defend the WIV by hypothesizing that the lab could have been studying a number of “novel coronavirus diseases,” because of Wuhan’s large bat population, but Stewart was quick to knock down that theory.

“It’s the only place to find bats, you won’t find bats anywhere else,” he remarked. “Oh, wait. Austin, Texas has thousands of them that fly out of a cave every night at dusk! Is there an Austin coronavirus? No, there doesn’t seem to be an Austin coronavirus.” 

“The only coronavirus we have is in Wuhan, where they have a lab called — What’s the lab called again, Stephan?” He asks, to which Colbert begrudgingly says, “The Wuhan novel coronavirus lab.”

Marie Finn