> everyone's applauding the gatekeepers who insisted on significant refactoring and the creation of additional tests before the change could be approved.

I certainly didn't applaud the gatekeeper because I believe they opened themselves up to a great risk. If you are doing an emergency patch to production you should minimize the amount of changes. All the refactoring of code was an unnecessary, reckless risk. The refactoring should move to the next scheduled release as the top priority since part of it is already in production.