I don't have a good answer but I feel strongly there is a difference of kind here, not just degree. But I would say as far as the 'easy math', people at that level train years to drop 30 seconds. So I think you're being a bit too flippant about the 5 minutes.
And yes I won't challenge Kipchoge but a lot of runners who were quite a bit worse than me are now running similar times to me, using the vaporflys. There is a competition/fairness issue at the sub-elite as well as elite levels.
But anyway I feel that storing and releasing kinetic energy is different than stability, grip, cushioning, temperature control. By the way I don't care if people train in things like Vaporflys just like I don't care if they train on a bicycle. But this is all just my opinion.
All rubber soled shoes store and release energy. It is physically impossible to build a perfect energy damper. So the question is: how much should be allowed to preserve the sport and how do authorities enforce it?
Let’s not kid ourselves, distance races are still all (99%) about the runner. You aren’t going to strap these shoes on and challenge Kipchoge in a marathon. You still have to put in an absolutely absurd amount of training time to compete. These shoes do not make you fit. For easy math, if you run a marathon in 2 hours and 5 minutes, the VaporFlys. may drop you down to 2 hours. Rallying against this just seems silly.
And shoes of any type give all sorts of advantages that have “improved” running relative to how it was at the dawn of time: stability, grip, cushioning, warmth/cooling depending on conditions, and now a small kinetic energy return. Why is the last one the only one to go?