Potentially for the same reason you'll usually have far-reaching amnesties after civil wars etc, if you want freedom going forward.
Doing an investigation to find "the real truth", which from what I gather in most threads here would be essentially "where did it come from and why was it the Wuhan lab that intentionally released it?", wouldn't really get us anywhere.
None of the large powers would cooperate if they felt threatened and there's nothing to win unless we believe that we automatically get a perfect cure if only we find the GPS coordinates where patient zero got infected. Would it? I don't think so.
I also believe that there's nothing we can do to stop another similar event by knowing where it came from. What's more relevant is how it spread so quickly around the globe, and as far as I understand, we have a pretty good understanding of that and it's mainly international air-plane travel. I don't think we'll see a lasting change in that regard, but maybe we will, and we will have fever-checks before boarding planes or non-regional trains.
> Doing an investigation to find "the real truth", which from what I gather in most threads here would be essentially "where did it come from and why was it the Wuhan lab that intentionally released it?", wouldn't really get us anywhere.
We shouldn't be conflating the result from a professional investigation with the prevalent popular opinion.
> I also believe that there's nothing we can do to stop another similar event by knowing where it came from.
Your viewpoint kind of hinges on this point and you haven't really supported it yet besides making the assertion. Why would we gain absolutely nothing from having more information about its origin, with respect to either dealing with current or future COVIDs? That conclusion seems very nonobvious to me.
> We shouldn't be conflating the result from a professional investigation with the prevalent popular opinion.
Maybe I'm too cynical, but professional investigations tend to be politically charged and popular opinion tends to be created by the same interests who create politics.
And it's not that we totally, absolutely wouldn't learn anything that would ever help us. It's just that we likely won't find a magic bullet (which would be worth a lot of trouble), but will probably create conditions where countries will cooperate less and mislead more the next time it happens. I mentioned amnesties previously, and I believe they work in a similar fashion. Hunt down the evil-doers who lost a civil war, if you want to remain in a perpetual state of civil war. Don't do it if you want to return to some kind of normalcy and peace.
But China is already uncooperative wrt investigations. That’s probably the main reason why so many people want an ivestigation. It just looks extremely shady.
So, what I don’t understand is how accepting uncooperativeness is going to make them more cooperative in the future. I see how it would work with a group of individuals. But we’re at a different level of abstraction here, dealing with federal governments.
I don't know, I'm not an expert. But clearly, having more information is strictly better than not having it.
So let me flip the question around and ask why should we not investigate?