Please be fair.  The Wuhan book highlights the multiple sequencing results that became available at the end of December 2019. The excerpt you provide (but leaves out the section that says the sequence didn't become available through GenBank) refers to the Institute of Pathogen Biology, which had received the genomic information from Vision Medicals. I discuss at length the Vision Medicals genomic diagnosis as it related to the outbreak response in Chapters 3, 4, 6 of Wuhan.
I agree with you that science led, at least initially. I recently commented on the importance of letting scientists play their role in The New Scientist: