> I imagine we'll see some monumental changes in Chinese lab safety after this, independent of whether or not they believe it came from a lab.
No, we won't. That would be the party admitting it was wrong before, which can never happen outside of a coup.
The party are many things, many of them bad. But they do not like global pandemics. And I expect many of them are quite elderly (eg, Xi Jingping is 68) and feel personally threatened by exotic new diseases.
I reckon they'll act.
There is no reason to think this won't happen again in our lifetimes. We have this amazing global logistic network that can apparently ferry a virus all over the world in about 3 months. Lab safety has to be beyond question.
I imagine we'll see some monumental changes in Chinese lab safety after this, independent of whether or not they believe it came from a lab.