Are there no options or apps to drop the entire bar below the notch era? I know that defeats the point of the extra display but it will be less jarring and no menu items could be obstructed.
I posted a solution here. Basically it's setting your screen aspect ratio to 16:10. It moves the menu bar and everything below the notch. I used BetterDisplay but I believe you can use any software that can set screen resolution. It was inspired by this post on StackExchange.