Yes, particles seem to be drawn before most other things, so they appear below water, too. Try it yourselves, put a torch next to water and look at it so the flames are in front of the water, or rather, so they would be in front of the water.
IMHO, it is not a duplicate of that report. I just tested it, and if you resize the window and switch to another window and back, it doesn't do anything out of the ordinary (completely unlike the MC-14555 fullscreen bug). This bug only happens to me if you 'snap' the window (i. e. maximize it to half the screen), and then switch to another program and back.
Same problem here on the 1.14 and 1.14.1 servers. High CPU all the time, running behind (almost always more than 2000ms), randomly kicking people. I was excited to play 1.14 with my friends but it's completely unplayable in multiplayer.