After more than one year of silence, the discussion about the origin of the deadly coronavirus that has so far killed over 3.75 million people worldwide, is beginning to get the attention of the U.S. mainstream media.
For the past 14 months, we’ve been trying to get to the bottom of where and how the deadly virus started only to be labeled as a conspiracy theorist and a misinformation site. Finally, someone in the media is now saying what millions of Americans are afraid to say due to fear of being de-platformed, kicked out of social media platforms, or labeled as racist.
As the saying goes, “many a truth is said in jest.” Yesterday, Comedian Jon Stewart joked about the coronavirus leaking out of Wuhan Lab. Stewart would have been censored or labeled as or conspiracy theorist if he had made the same joke 14 months ago. Until a month ago, Facebook would have blocked this video from being published on its platform. What a difference a year makes.
For some of our readers who might not who Jon Stewart is, he is a former host of The Daily Show, a satirical news program on Comedy Central. Stewart hosted the program from 1999 before he later retired in 2015.
During his appearance on Stephen Colbert’s show on Monday, Colbert asked him how he was feeling about the scientific response to COVID-19. Cleverly balancing satire with insight and facts, Stewart responded:
“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.”
“Do you mean perhaps there’s a chance that this was created in a lab?” asked Colbert, adding “There’s an investigation.”
“A chance?” Stewart fired back.
“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? And then they asked those scientists – they’re like ‘how did this… so wait a minute, you work at the Wuhan respiratory coronavirus lab. How did this happen?’ and they’re like ‘mmmm – a pangolin kissed a turtle?’ and you’re like ‘no… the name of your lab! If you look at the name! Can I… let me see your business card. Show me your business card. Oh – I work at the coronavirus lab in Wuhan. Oh, cause there’s a coronavirus loose in Wuhan. How did that happen?’
‘Maybe a bat… flew into the Cloaca of a turkey and… then it sneezed into my chili. And now we all have Coronavirus.”
Below is a Twitter video of his interview with Stephen Colbert.
Right now: Jon Stewart on the Covid Lab Leak “theory” is solid laughs pic.twitter.com/WlRX35p9WK
— siskin.eth (@mns) June 15, 2021
As predicted, social media’s reaction to Stewart’s comments was swift and not that suprising.
