spin up a second pihole docker and upgrade them separately so they can failover to the other one while upgrading. I do not have an issue with 20min lose of DNS after updating my pi.hole docker, but I did spin up a second one when I wanted to try unbound+pi.hole and just kept them both up/running.

I wouldn’t notice

The best response would be that you can’t help because your representative(s) that would have agreed with keeping NOAA around weren’t elected into office.