SARS/MERS were easily contained because the virus needed to adapt and evolve before effectively spreading amongst humans. SARS2 was predated and highly infectious thus containment was impossible.
Also if this research was so essentially, why does EcoHealth still to this day refuse to share their research/data? You'd think that would be useful to have publicly funded research to help with the worst pandemic in 100 years, but I guess not! So why take the risks?
"Some want to pass a law: All gain-of-function should be stopped. But if all gain-of-function stops, you will have no vaccines for flu. You will have no vaccines for any of the other diseases, because all of that manipulates a virus or a pathogen to gain a certain function to be able to make a vaccine."