This is all very good news. I just got an alert about a vulnerability in a dependency of axios (it's an older project). Getting rid of these dependencies is a much more attractive solution than merely upgrading them.

isn't upgrading node going to ba bigger challenge? (if you're on a node version that's no longer receiving maintenance)

No idea how much compatibility breakage there is, but it's probably going to have to happen at some point, and reducing dependencies sounds worth it to me.