I thought that GitHub supports some sort of locking repo, such as not allowing PRs? As X allows comments from accounts mentioned in tweet.
Maybe people will see the giant list of issues and PRs and be concerned, but if you put a note at the top of the README indicating that's what's going on, the only people who won't notice (or won't accept it) it are the ones that you're probably trying to avoid with this strategy anyhow, so it's no loss to have them go elsewhere.