Every time another "expert" or an academic says that it's not worth investigating, because it is too political, I treat it as a litmus test if the person is full of shit and should not be allowed near public policy decision. Even if they are an expert in the field, does not mean they are "street smart".

Everything can be and is politicized. Even local news about a petty theft or changes to a small park ends up being very political in the media or some local discussion board (looking at Nextdoor). If it crosses the border, it becomes international politics.

There are existing cases when coronaviruses leaked from the labs before and it is a known concern: [1], [2]
The debate on the risking of such research has been going on for years [3] and in 2014 the US even paused funding selected gain-of-function research [4]. It happened before more than once, denying that it could have happened again in 2019, because there are no evidence, is simply lazy. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Why it matters? Because only in 2016 China adopted national guidelines for treatment of lab animals [5].

Knowing what happens critically important to make sure it does not happen again. Any system, that wants to adapt needs to analyze and find root cause of the mistake. Take rules and regulations in Aviation, all decisions about safety are driven by experience and past mistakes. If something is a pilot's mistake, then either there is a safeguard added, protocol or training altered, or everything above; but it's not customary to downplay or avoid highlighting human error. It is a common-sense approach used in any area, from aviation to military to sea navigation, etc. Either actors learn or the system learns by eliminating actors. Only in case of virus research, humanity is an actor that either needs to learn or ...

And I don't understand, why it is so important not o blame Chinese government?
Do we not want to blame the Soviet government for the handling and the fallout of Chernobyl? Or those, who made risky decisions while operation the plant?
If it is leaked from the lab, amend must be made to the facility, protocols, guidelines. Nevertheless, if it turns out that it is someone's gross negligence, the person or group of people should be reprimanded.

The US industrial farming can be a culprit of another "pig" or "chicken" flu or something more deadly. I would not be surprised, if some industrial farm with a string of sanitary and animal rights violations breeds a new virus. In this case, I want them to be reprimanded; if a state has loose regulations to prevent it, I want that state to be reprimanded by the federal government. And I would expect the US to take financial loss and pressure from the international community as an incentive to learn from mistake.

[1] SARS escaped Beijing lab twice (2004) https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-...

[2] https://www.who.int/csr/don/2003_09_24/en/

[3] Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research (2015) https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debat...

[4] http://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Documents/gain-of-function.pdf

[5] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/china-finally-settin...