Per T187285 the magic word {{SHORTDESC:}} was created to replace the (mis)use of wikidata item-descriptions as short article-descriptions for English Wikipedia. The transition was to be completed once EnWiki created local descriptions for two million articles. [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=hastemplate%3A%22short+description%22&ns0=1 | That milestone has been reached. ]]
Wikidata item-descriptions should no longer be pulled or displayed as article-descriptions for English Wikipedia articles, anywhere. This includes mobile article views, anywhere in any APP, on-wiki search result descriptions, [[ https://www.wikipedia.org/ | wikipedia.org ]] search result descriptions, VisualEditor add-link tool search results, Visual Editor edit-tool article-description, any other usage inside Visual Editor, Related Articles descriptions, and any other location I may have missed.
A filter was also created to block descriptions consisting of spaces/punctuation/non-breaking-spaces/?other? That filter should be removed as obsolete code complexity / code cruft.