Set aside COVID for a sec, as hard as that is. Also set aside the origin discussion of lab leak vs. wet market vs. natural.
Why do GoF? This is literally creating killer viruses in the lab that don't exist in nature. Some of these are relatively benign flu-like stuff, and some of them would make COVID look like a sniffle. We are basically trusting the future of humanity (not an exaggeration at this point) to the security of largely unregulated labs and disinterested governments around the world. It's like nuclear weapons, only worse, because there are only a few countries that could create nuclear devastation. There are at least dozens of countries capable of GoF now. We're one finger prick, one broken slide, or one mis-configured BSL lab from an extinction-level event. It came out that the Wuhan lab was supposed to be doing research at BSL-4 but was actually at BSL-3 or -2. This is scary, scary stuff and we're getting by on luck and voluntary regulation. It's beyond playing with fire, it's incredibly irresponsible because we're basically putting the nuclear football and big red button in every lab doing this research around the world.
As pointed out above, our virological research and understanding has progressed independently of GoF research. We don't need it, it doesn't provide demonstrable value commensurate with the risks it poses and it should be banned WW. We've managed it with with human cloning - even China is onboard, and jailed the mad scientist that was going that direction. Any country that makes supportive moves of scientists trying human cloning would turn into a world pariah. We need to treat GoF the same.