>>rebooting the router has no effect on getting anything up and running.
Maybe not for your rural internet issues, but router reboots are a valid fix for some issues. Routers are little microcomputers mostly running Linux, and they crash and burn like any other system. Some, like my old Linksys WRT54GL tended to get confused after months of heavy use and required a reboot.
As far as the OP router reboot warning goes: everyone should probably do it just to be sure to flush any lurking in memory instance of the VPNFilter stage 2 malware. The odds of anybody having that infestation are low, but a reboot takes only a minute.
The reboot works by flushing any VPNFilter stage 2 infestation from the router memory. If the router is infected with the persistent stage 1 infestation, after reboot that code will try to contact the main server that the FBI sinkholed to locate a server to download the actual malicious stage 2 code again. That tells the FBI who is infected, so they can notify ISPs, who can then notify the users who, then need to do a full factory reset to eliminate the stage 1 infection.
Because the FBI sinkholed that Russian server, which was the backup method the malware uses to obtain the stage 2 malware, and I assume, also took out the Photobucket image primary method of obtaining an IP address for a server to download stage 2 from, a VPNFilter stage 1 infected router can no longer obtain the actual stage 2 malicious code UNLESS contacted by the blackhats directly (which is probably unlikely unless router belongs to a juicy target)
So rebooting the router flushes any stage 2 or stage 3 infection, but does not actually remove the stage 1 infection. That requires a factory reset or flashing with new firmware. However, unless method 3 is used (direct contact by miscreants), a stage 1 infected router presumably can't do anything but futilely try to download stage 2 and fail doing so.
At this point it appears to be only a limited, small set of router models that could be infected, but as that is uncertain, doing the reboot is worth taking a minute or two. And disabling remote admin, And changing the router password.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/05/fbi-tells-router-users-to-reboot-now-to-kill-...
