Try profiling the time it takes to complete the update request and see if it is actually as bad as you think.

I didn’t figure 200,000 rows was running that slow, but I thought it was an easy entry point into analyzing code that allows parameter-less queries accidentally. site_aggregates has been an example in the code where lack of parameters was hitting 1500 rows when it was supposed to be hitting 1, same basic problem I suspect here.

I know people are avoiding looking at the SQL in the project, simple things like this are not getting eyeballs:

    select c.creator_id from comment c
    inner join person u on c.creator_id = u.id
    inner join person pe on c.creator_id = pe.id