from [0]:
> Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.
If I had done some work in the past on biological weapons that I didn't want the world to know about, I'd be very concerned about letting a bunch of international investigators examine labs that might be literally right down the hall. Alternatively if I were a government hostile to china who knew damn well what china was doing down the hall but can't find a good way to call them out on it, the opportunity to send investigators in for an unrelated reason would be a godsend.
[0] https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan...
Incentives gone wrong - when you risk getting gulag'd for missing your quarterly numbers, you will fudge your numbers.
I don't know if COVID leaked from a lab or not. I think it's possible and very much worth investigating. What I'm against is these kind of "social proof" arguments which can seem convincing but are are often vacuous.
Investigate the evidence. Pressure the PRC to show their records and allow external investigations. Publicly bluster that refusal to open up in the face of legitimate questions should be considered evidence of culpability if they refuse to open up! But don't actually consider a repressive government being repressive by default as actual proof of anything.
The notorious case of the Chinese spy needing spy auth docs to prove that she's a bona fide spy to the Chinese consulate in the US is an example. Surely they could have authed her using her passport, but no, she needed the auth docs and she got caught for having them.
Nuclear disaster sound scary, but COVID is actually objectively scarier.
(Not sure which way you meant the comparison goes)