Lab strains of things tend to be extremely sensitive and not human adapted. You shouldn't study and modify human-infecting organisms in your basement anyway. While you shouldn't ignore protective equipment and proper procedure... paranoia about infecting yourself with a lab leak isn't warranted.
This guy shows a lot of how it's done: https://www.youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium
Basically you can design/edit/inject custom genes into things and see real results spending on the scale of $100-$1000.