Why is Minecraft running incredibly slow?

It could numerous things. What you need to do is reboot and see if that doesn't help. If it doesn't than proceed with caution and look up how to tune up your PC. Read/watch multiple sources, mainly if more than one says the same than it's correct and not a troll(i.e.Delete system 32)

I don't know what laptop or OS you have so I'm not sure without specs or what programs you have running etc. You say the specs are good enough so I take your word for it but what about programs or background process are running at the time?

As your laptop might have the correct specs but if the resources are going to other things that are running at the time than you are working with less.

For perspective, Guild Wars 2, which is far more demanding than MC, runs perfectly at the moment. And I always make sure I have minimal background processes running when I play games. I have worked with computers in the past so I can assure you I know my **** when it comes to this kind of thing, yet still I can't understand what's caused this. I can't see any sign of a virus… Which leads me to try reinstalling minecraft, which I'm reluctant to do but I guess it's my only choice at this point. I've assigned 8GB RAM to graphics, my laptop isn't the issue.

I think you neef to MEIN for resources to KREFT a new laptop