Jon Stewart made a lasting impression when he peddled the Wuhan "lab leak" theory during his appearance as the first guest on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" upon its return to the Ed Sullivan Theater on Monday.
Speaking to Colbert in front of a fully vaccinated audience, Stewart addressed the ongoing investigation into whether or not COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab.
"I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science," Stewart said, according to Yahoo News. "Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science."
Replying to Stewart's remark, Colbert asked if he meant there was a chance that there was merit to the lab leak theory.
"A chance?" Stewart replied. "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!"
Stewart added jokingly that, when scientists working in the lab were asked how the pandemic might have started, 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?"
The former Daily Show host compared the situation to an "outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey" in Pennsylvania.
"What do you think happened?" he said. "I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel made it with a cocoa bean. Or it’s the f***ing chocolate factory!"
Colbert pointed out that it was possible the novel coronavirus was being studied at the Wuhan lab because there are a lot of coronavirus diseases due to the bat population there, but Stewart doubled down on his claims.
"This is not a conspiracy!" Stewart shot back. "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.'"
Speaking directly into the camera, Stewart added, "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."
After a break, Stewart pushed his point one last time.
"Can I say this about scientists?" he asked. "I love them and they do such good work but they are going to kill us all."
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