Yoast Purge Plugin Removal — Attachment URLs

Looking for some clarification on the Yoast Purge Plugin…

– Applied the plugin 2 months ago
– Sitting on about 279 crawl errors in search console that have been static now for several weeks. I’m assuming that’s what is supposed to happen and now we are to wait up to 6 months for Google to remove them.

In searching comments on the original “announcement” regarding this issue made by Yoast, I read the following from two different users: (on the same post)

“”Am I correct in thinking that Google Search Console will keep reporting errors for the 410s as long as the purge plugin and attachment-sitemap.xml are in place because the sitemap will keep on pointing to non-existing pages?

Furthermore – when the result of the google query “site:https://mydomain.com/ inurl:attachment_id” is nearing zero, is it then the right time to remove the purge plugin and related attachment-sitemap.xml? Yes, I have noted the comments about “six months”, but isn’t the result of the query above the best measure, and when it’s zero’ed, then we’re good?””
(to which Yoast replied, “yes & yes — you’ve understood it perfectly”)

The second comment was in response to someone asking about the same search in reference to the attachment url(s) but he had never actually installed the plugin:

IF
““Your search – site:https://mydomain.com/ inurl:attachment_id – did not match any documents.”
…then you’re likely all good, as the problematic slim content pages have not been indexed by Google.

Just make sure that you have 1) a recent / latest version of the Yoast standard plugin that has the discussed bug corrected and 2) the setting “redirect attachment URLs” set to “yes”, and you won’t need the additional purge plugin.””

NOW, based on the above, do I understand that so long as the plugin is activated, those 410 pages will SIT there? And for as long as they sit there, Google will report them as errors? (until Google removes them)

Also, when I implement the search, “site:https://mydomain.com/ inurl:attachment_id,” I too get the message “did not match any documents.” Which is another reason I am trying to determine if I can take the next steps.

All that said, I have 3 questions:

1. What would happen if I remove the plugin at this point? What would happen to those 279 errors? Is there ANY harm I can do by deactivating it now?

2. IF the plugin has done what it is supposed to do (no additional 410 errors) wouldn’t it make sense to remove it now or do I need to wait until Google removes the 410s at some point in time?

3. IF I can deactivate it, can I then just mark all of the errors in Search Console as “fixed” and then remove the attachment sitemap too?

I’m just trying to get some clarification here! I understand the waiting 6 months thing — I do! However, if the process has run its course already and now we’re just sitting and waiting for Google to run its, is it okay to remove things sooner rather than later?

I am an admitted novice and I just want to do the right thing. Any direction with regard to any of the above would be most graciously and humbly welcome.

Thank you most kindly!!

The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]