Another way is to define a list of suppressed packages,
and set up apt-get so that it disregards anything that other packages
say about those suppressed packages.
This is easy and modular.
imho, this path sets a future course of action that is better avoided: Other packages suffering the same issue would have to be hacked along in this setup, and it could get bloaty or, I don't have precise knowledge about what the fix would imply, but could make the gNS version of apt unique (and therefore, incompatible). Please, someone confirm or correct this.
Although it is hard or time consuming to rebuild the packs, it'll be for the best, as it will fix the issue instead of patching it.
On the other hand, we can look at it as a two-step fix. Mr. Goetz seems to be willing to do the "easy" fix, which would leave the second set, the one that requires rebuilding. We could have first one, then the other. A partial fix that breaks nothing is a better fix than no fix; and we lose nothing, but get closer to the complete solution.