GOING VIRAL
Jon Stewart reveals why he thinks Covid leaked from Wuhan lab in clash with Stephen Colbert
JON Stewart has clashed with Stephen Colbert over his belief in the Covid-19 Wuhan "lab leak" theory.
During Monday's episode of the Late Show, Stewart said “we owe a great debt of gratitude to science" - but he noted the crisis was "more than likely caused by science."
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"Do you mean perhaps there’s a chance that this was created in a lab? If there’s evidence I’d love to hear it," said Colbert, who apparently didn't believe the theory.
Stewart replied: “A chance? Oh my god! There’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, , what do we do? The disease is the same name as the lab! That’s just a little too weird, don’t you think?”
The comedian quipped that the pandemic must have been caused by “a pangolin kissed a turtle” or “a bat flew into the cloaca of a turkey, and then it sneezed into my chili and now we all have coronavirus.”
“There’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, — what do you think happened?” he said
“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!”
“‘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 f***ed up,'” he said.
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Colbert continued to question the theory despite disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci walking back his dismissal of it and President Joe Biden investigating whether Covid-19 came from the Wuhan lab.
He insisted: “It could be possible that they have the lab … because in Wuhan there are a lot of coronavirus diseases because of the bat population there" - but Stewart was derisive.
“It’s the only place you can find bats,” he retorted. “Austin, Texas has thousands of them that fly out of a cave every night at dusk."
Stewart pointed out that there had not been an Austin Covid.
“The only coronavirus we have is in Wuhan where they have a lab called – what’s the lab called again, Stephen?” he asked, to which Colbert answered: “The Wuhan novel coronavirus lab."
An irritated Colbert then likened Stewart to Senator Ron Johnson, who cited “evidence about a potential "lab leak" theory has been hiding in plain sight for months."
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The televised spat comes after last month after allegedly shutting down a previous probe into its origins.
the intelligence community will "redouble their efforts" to discover the origins of the and report back to him within 90 days.
They will be investigating whether the virus jumped from an animal host to humans or whether it was accidentally released from a lab in Wuhan,
The theory that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak has become increasingly mainstream in recent days despite being condemned as a conspiracy theory over the past year and a half.
It was often pushed by former who did not think the pandemic erupted from human contact with an infected animal.
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He was recently joined by the nation's top infectious disease expert Dr as pressure for a deeper investigation grew.
"As of today, the U.S. Intelligence Community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” Biden said in a statement.
He revealed that two of the 18 intelligence agencies believe in the animal link but that another "leans more toward" the lab theory.
The president said that each of these agencies has "low or moderate confidence" in their stance.
Biden added that "the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other."
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The Biden administration has spent months minimalizing the possibility that the virus originated in a lab but is now calling on China to be transparent about the outbreak.
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It called on China to cooperate with an international probe into the pandemic's origins.
Biden has directed the US national laboratories to also assist with the investigation.
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