Here's an example: one of your local health department's jobs is to scrutinize private businesses sanitation practices so you don't get sick from contaminated food. Ditto the water systems, so you don't get sick from contaminated water. The idea is to prevent complacency.
Prior to that, people did get sick, and public investigations were mounted to pinpoint the problem. Nobody wanted to admit to themselves that they were to blame, that they had hurt or killed someone, but the society benefited from the momentary discomfort and those hard truths.
I don't think your example is relevant nor is it a good analogy.
The situation is more like you're McDonalds and everyone at your store and your competitors stores are getting food poisoning.
Instead of properly understanding why contaminated food is arriving at your store and stopping the poisoning within your store, you're researching whether or not the contaminated food originated at Burger King.
It's not bad to research whether or not the contaminated food originated at Burger King, but regardless knowing that isn't going to stop the food poisoning from spreading within your store.
I like this analogy because there are already food safety laws just like how there are safety standards for working within a lab. Regardless, accidents happen, and people get poisoned. Kind of like the Chipotle outbreaks.
If you buy tacos from Chipotle and they sell you a tainted taco on accident. You get sick. Hopefully you survive. In any case you will want Chipotle to do a thorough investigation to prevent it from happening again.
You've completely misunderstood my point. My point is that we're McDonalds - not Chipotle. Should McDonalds be investigating Chipotle's problems or their own? It's really that simple...
If you believe McDonalds in this analogy should be investigating the origins of Chipotle's problems as opposed to resolving their ongoing issue then we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I don't understand your analogy. If a sizeable population of the world got sick from eating at Chipotle...and it was easily communicably spreadable infecting even those that never ate there...and people died as a result (3 MILLION)...and it caused massive world-wide economic damage...I'd bet they'd be quite interested in the cause no matter where they worked. In your analogy, the impact wasn't just limited to those who ate at Chipotle. It was everyone.
That situation isn't analogous, but American Airlines would reduce its risk more by reading its own incident reports compared to Delta's, yes. In general focusing on one's own failings is superior to focusing on another's.
Ok but they can do both, right? I mean, I can improve my performance by looking at my own performance, but also watching others.
Moreover, the US can exert a lot of pressure on other countries to meet certain standards and reduce risk. Knowing what went wrong will help determine standards.
It's not like lab-leak-causes-disease only happens once. This happens all the time, just like aircraft incidents. If incidents weren't investigated and tracked, planes would be riskier than they are.
Now would you want McDonalds to research Chipotle or stop outbreaks in their own stores? Seems pretty obvious to me. Perhaps I'm missing something?
Ultimately Chipotle is already incentivized to figure it out themselves, unless the argument is Chipotle is intentionally infecting their own customers?
Going back to the original point - what the USA should do for its own citizens won't change regardless of whether COVID was an accident, from wild game, etc.
Prior to that, people did get sick, and public investigations were mounted to pinpoint the problem. Nobody wanted to admit to themselves that they were to blame, that they had hurt or killed someone, but the society benefited from the momentary discomfort and those hard truths.