Interesting article, but it doesn’t really reach a satisfactory conclusion. Two things you might have mentioned:
1. Installing the updates from behind a NAT router, whilst avoiding accessing anything other than the Windows update server, really does give quite a lot of protection. Such NAT routers are commonly supplied with ADSL connections and so may be the most practical solution for people who have one (although the NAT feature may need to be manually enabled).
2. Running a complete virus scan after all the updates are installed gives you at least some confidence that you can start accessing web pages and email. Make sure the scanner has a high detection rate (Avira Antivir Personal is free and allegedly scores well on this, at the expense of some false positives).