This is going to get buried, but I think it’s important to note that block on twitter (unlike on most platforms) works both ways. You can still mute an account, and you won’t see any of their content or mentions.
By removing block, it means you can no longer block a person from following you, but you can still prevent seeing their stuff. After all - all that person has to do see your public tweets is open an incognito browser window, and view your profile. If you have a private profile, none of this applies to begin with. So in that sense, I agree with Elon - block in its current form on twitter makes no sense.
Edit: Responding directly onto your posts - good point, I hadn’t considered that. It’s partially circumvented by changing the setting so can comment on your posts, but I agree that’s more effort. For all the other things though - if you block someone now they can just take a screenshot of your tweet and comment on that.