I don't believe that's true for all telemetry data; there's an option between enhanced & core/basic or similar, but it cannot be disabled.
I use windows as my daily driver for both work and home and what kills me, and your argument IMO, is that forced updates turn on new features and old ones that I've disabled, and dark patterns put your typical user in a state where the only available option appears to be enabling the function. Cortana is a great example of this, if you accidently run it while disabled (how is that even possible?) you cannot exit, and the UI implies you need to continue, which gets you to enable it. You can't quit, only minimize to the tray, then the dialog pops up frequently. You need to end the process from the process explorer, which most users are not going to do.
I used to buy all windows computers directly from the Microsoft store because they were optimized to run windows as well as possible, so had no bloatware or add-on garbage. now Windows itself includes all these features and add-ons, which seems so short-sighted.