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The VM host will still have the patch applied, won't it?

Yes, but if it's your metal, you don't need to.

Good idea. But it’s a windows executable and depends quite heavily on windows specifics.

(In my case anyway)

30% overhead might be inscentive to revisit the assumption we can’t rewrite it for Linux.

You still can move some functionality to a device driver or something else that runs in the NT kernel space.

But then you have to release the module as GPL, no?

Only if you want to do something that would otherwise be a violation of copyright - e.g. distribute the module to other people (assuming it's sufficiently entangled with linux to be a derivative work therof). The GPL only licenses you to do things that you otherwise couldn't do, it doesn't restrict you from doing things that were never a violation of copyright (e.g. privately modifying your own things).

No kernel modules can be closed source; GPU drivers are a common example of a closed source kernel module.