They're planning ahead. With COVID, you could see many governors and Senators normalizing risky behavior, before reopening the states.
This is similar. Intel see that AMD can, if they keep clocks the same, use N7P or N7+ and unified L3$ to realize 10-15% IPC gains, and since AMD already have the IPC lead, such a gain would push AMD ahead in gaming, while furthering productivity leads in most tasks.
He is not saying this as a response to the current state.
He is saying it in order to pre-emptively normalize the idea that benchmarks are not useful these days, which will be their stance going forward, as they expect AMD to lead in most metrics.