I booked some flights to NYC to visit my daughter for Thanksgiving in early October. Due to the quarantine (4 days) requirement, this trip isn't going to work out as it is only 3 days in total. United is telling me my choices are to pay $125 per ticket to refund the miles (about 60% of the ticket value) OR change the flights up to 1 year from when I booked. Questions...

1. Is there is no way around this $125 fee per ticket? Somebody asked this same question 22 days ago on this forum but did not get told there was a fee (UPDATE: I noticed this is because I'm within 30 days - didn't see travel advisory until too late..). I tried to cancel and it was going to charge me $125 per ticket to refund the miles
2. Assuming I need to rebook the flight, all the flights from the rebooking screen show as "unavailable" past December of this year. I went to the regular award search and saw next summer is wide open. Is there no way for me to book these flights? I want to push this out as far out as possible. Can I just do a "no show" for my flight and rebook once these become available?

Thx