Hej Alina! Thanks for being open with having an economic interest in this topic being dragged out into the open again.
> It is very surprising to me that these feasible routes of inquiry have not been explored more than 2 years into the pandemic.
It's not too surprising to me. International diplomacy works like this. With a more general picture in mind, specific topics often need to be swept under the rug. Otherwise international relations between any two countries would be constantly in shambles and we'd long have seen WW3, WW4 and WW5.
Note that I'm not advocating for any of this hush-hush. I'd also like to know what happened. But that's just not how international diplomacy works. In this particular case, if WHO wants continued support from China, then you need to carefully balance what and how you criticize. Nobody is helped if China leaves the WHO or next time doesn't even tell anybody that a pandemic is coming for fear of being bullied for this kind of thing. I'm sure the responsible bodies (lab people) will learn their lesson and be more careful going forward. That's the only thing we can hope for nonetheless. It's unrealistic to think China would be punished and all their labs shut down. This won't happen.