PS5 does not have a SMT Off feature for its CPU; SMT is always enabled, so the high-limit clock of the CPU (3.5 GHz) is always there and that's with 16 threads available.
Seeing that there are scenarios where the Series X version is maintaining higher framerates in 120 FPS mode, since the framerates would be CPU-bound as the CPU issues the drawcalls to the GPU, then there's a chance SMT Off mode might be getting used for the game on Series X and Series S platforms, but this is just speculation.
It's not that COVID didn't affect Sony; it certainly did. However, Sony most likely started their next-gen development/engineering earlier than MS, if they were less reliant on certain RDNA2 features being finalized since they'd be going with their own custom implementations analogous to those features, as is usually suggested. There is still also the (slight) proof they may've considered a 2019 launch, though that looks to be a bit less likely in hindsight considering no updated versions of TLOU2 or GoT are present on PS5, neither of those games were ready for 2019, and I doubt Sony'd want to release those games in 2020 (after a 2019 PS5 launch) on PS4 with no actual next-gen upgrades on PS5. Considering the timeliness of Miles Morales editions on PS5 and PS4, lack of any equivalents for TLOU2 or GoT kind of suggests 2019 might not've been in the cards for PS5 launch after all.
At the end of the day, places like DF (and NX Gamer, etc.) are professionals; they aren't going to become slovenly fanboys and outright trash a platform, say it sucks ass, is worthless etc. just because it's underperforming in a few 3P cross-gen launch titles. No one with a brain passes permanent judgement on a console's capabilities after a literal week, it seems a lot of people's perspectives around here have become skewed, probably influenced too much from the quickness and instant gratification of social media.
It's a bit more telling that people want to seemingly pit people like John, Richard, Alex etc. against other solid analysis folks like NX Gamer; you don't need to be limited in your scope, there's more than enough room for all of these guys to coexist as game performance analyzers. The more, the merrier, since that in turn means more potential points to cross-reference and dig deeper into what these games are or aren't doing.
We've got to stop trying to call for DF's blood every time they do a comparison analysis because we don't feel like they bodied one piece of plastic enough; all of these analysis guys, they certainly want to specify where things are strong or weak in, but they aren't really interested in completely trashing one console or another, even if some performance is sub-optimal. Especially considering this is launch period, it is imperative we give the consoles some time to breath, and none of this invalidates the reality that, yes, MS is most definitely suffering from a perception problem that could become really bad for them if things aren't improved on their end. But that is a different conversation for another time.