Hmm, you draw different conclusions than I do.

First, Jon Stewart & family are vaccinated - 1 kid has *5* vaccines if you believe him (no, i don't). So he's not anti-vaxx, and he specifically notes his sadness that the best science came up with in 100 years is "wear a mask and wash your hands" - not saying *don't* do that, just, couldn't we have gotten better disease response in that amazing century?

(And even if Trumple hadn't dismantled our pandemic response, the CDC and WHO still we're sticking with invalid historical measure of "2 meters airborne" that aren't factually true, so we still would get disease spread from airborne Covid 3-4-5 meters away, depending on room circulation)

The Chinese government lies and covers up basic details of its disease and weapons research. More than most. Think of Chernobyl level coverup. Several times a year. They have a million Uyghurs in lockup, many doing incarcerated labor for the crime if being Muslim, yet still insist they've done nothing wrong. Similar with Hing Kong's clampdown. So thhis isn't weapons inspectors checking out suspect Iran nuclear facilities - this is badass research, which we may or may not have a handle on its extent.

(here are Chinese lab scientists off scraping cave walls for bat viruses the year the pandemic started:

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/covid-origin-what-do-we-know-a... )

We now have CRISPR for gene editing, and surprise, Chinese try doing live animal mutations. Even garage projects will be possible. Science could lead us to a mess.

The Chinese have implemented AI-enhanced facial recognition with camera surveillance tied to incarceration on a massive scale compared to anything anywhere else. We know the Chinese government has a very different attitude to free speech, including spying on and shutting down students abroad.

All this said, it is possible that the Wuhan Flu was actually an accidental bat or pangolin mutation, or came out of the lab much more accidentally than a directed weaponized Covid-SARS project gone awry. But a commentator/comedian on TV is by no means authoritative or indicative of anything. The only real answers and certainty will come from any on-the-ground investigation without covered up testimony from lab participants, hospital or other treatment records, etc al. Which was hard enough to do with Iraq inspections - harder to do with top secret lab environments. Jon Stewart's skepticism is warranted, but certainly not definitive - nor are Colbert's assurances.

"If a strain escaped a laboratory, it was likely because they were researching a disease that had already existed in hopes of figuring out how to contain it, not engineering a bio-weapon like the Kamino cloners in Star Wars." - bull fucking shit. You are making an apology for China that cannot be assumed. China is researching offensive weapons - nukes, biological, maritime in the South Sea, their whole Belt and Road global infrastructure/global influence scheme. This is a secretive state that's gone greatly backwards on human rights the last 15 years, and yet you're giving them every benefit of the doubt as if we were talking about Denmark. China has *disappeared* one of its richest tycoons, off somewhere being held and "re-educated". How do you square that with the assumptiion that anything done in Wuhan was because of normal scientific curiosity and humanitarian purposes?

Give Jon Stewart a break. Perhaps he'll be proven wrong, but the left can stand to consider multiple possibilities rather than cancelling and fairly justifiable alternate view that steps on their carefully cultivated feelings. We used to think alternative lifestyle and viewpoint was "progressive". Now it's a threat to our orthodoxy?