The only viable counterargument I’ve heard to this is that the government can be competent at X while being incompetent at Y, even if X is objectively harder than Y. The government is weird like that. It’s big and diverse and crazy. Thus, the conclusion goes, we should still have some hope (10%?) that we can get the government to behave sanely on the topic of AGI risk, especially with warning shots, despite the evidence of it behaving incompetently on the topic of bio risk despite warning shots.
Or, to put it more succinctly: The COVID situation is just one example; it’s not overwhelmingly strong evidence.
Readers might be interested in the comments over here, especially Daniel K.’s comment: