https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246
> Why do these distinctions matter? If we find more concrete evidence of a “spill-over” event with SARS-CoV-2 passing directly from bat to human, then efforts to understand and manage the bat–human interface need to be significantly strengthened. But if SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the chain of events and prevent this from happening again.
It seems the crux of the argument is to better react in the short term, but it looks to my untrained eyes that we already passed that level of investigation if we have effective means to prevent infection.
I also guess we’d still need to explore all other tracks anyway (we can’t just focus on lab spills for instance, if that was the root cause, and stop to care about the bat/human interface, nor should it be assumed that any other path will be less important in the future)
Basically I see it as preparing to win the last war.