But they didn't release immediately -- they waited a month, but forgot to tell the distros, and forgot to check if waiting a month had actually lead to distros picking up the patches and shipping them.
Linux kernel is one of the most audited open-source projects ever. I guarantee you that someone did reverse the patch.
> but forgot to tell the distros
Probably an oversight, but irrelevant. The bug was in the linux kernel. It's insane to suggest that they should have notified everyone shipping the linux kernel.