I take issue with that. Kernel programming was not to blame; looking up addresses from a file and accessing those memory locations without any validation is. The same technique would yield the same result at any Ring.
All of the service interruptions would have been just "computer temporarily not protected by crowdstrike agent". Not the same thing at all.
When various apps running the world are crashing, unable to execute because malware protection is failing, there is no difference.
Significant and often far worse. It would leave the machine running unprotected.
Yes, the kernel is fine and is not to blame. But running basically a rootkit controlled by a third party indeed is to blame.
That's still an outage for those key systems.