Youtube does not punish you if you are not consistent. That is simply a myth. There are plenty of very successful youtubers who only publish occasionally or irregularly.
YT as a platform works for all kinds of producers , but as a content creator you are the in the space of high volume low quality content then yes publishing frequently is a must.
However if you are high quality low volume creator who is almost guaranteed tens of million views you could do only infrequently, however each video is going take a lot of time to produce.
(I'm sure it does, and I'd like to know more about the algorithm.)
YT like Search is heavily targeted for SEO, having access to the algorithm will just make it easier for exploitation , we will get even more low quality low effort content in our feeds than now. More good creators will leave the platform.
I would believe that what you describe is true for long-established YouTube personalities, and I can think of plenty myself, but I can think of pretty few that haven't been doing it for at least five years or so (with the exception of the woodworking space, where it seems like perhaps there's still some growth opportunities despite plenty of creators--my guess is it's because the ad revenue is way better there). I follow a lot of smaller essayists 'cause I like that sort of thing and have a friendly recommendation network to leverage; YouTube very rarely recommends me long-form content, in either Search or Suggested Videos, from somebody I've never seen before.