There were that many waiting to be mined before the PR... You just didn't see them.
There were only about ~700 non-standard OP returns on-chain previous to this PR, and now as this PR is coming to fruition, just on
nostr:nprofile1qy08wumn8ghj7en9v4j8xtnwdaehgu3wvfskuep0wphhqatvv9eqzrthwden5te0dehhxtnvdakqqg8plualm48yqv2etxcgkn7vsfz74fg5vdlp6nkz4ctxkapngxlp4uypp6uv 's node there are 2000 non-standard tx's waiting to be mined at this moment. And people are saying removing the filter won't increase spam? Just the mere act of saying they would remove it has increased spam by an order of magnitude.
Core is completely corrupt if they do not own up to the mistake and reverse course.