TLDR: Ubuntu Pro offers additional security patches to packages found in the universe repo. Universe is community maintained so Ubuntu is essentially stepping in to provide critical CVE patches to some popular software in this repo that the community has not addressed.
I suppose it depends on how you look at it but I don’t really see this as withholding patches. Software in this repo would otherwise be missing these patches and it’s a ton of work for Ubuntu to provide these patches themselves.
Now is they move glibc to universe and tell me to subscribe to get updates I’ll feel differently.
Tick bites can cause it. Something about your body building immunity to a protein transferred by the tick that closely matches those found in beef or something like that.