"If you have a highly dynamic application that needs to rerender frequently, and you want to avoid the heavy weight of template diffing, [...] ReactJS’s virtual DOM will be super effective. However, if you’re site doesn’t have those needs, CHOOSE SOMETHING ELSE!"
Well choose a DOM representation implementation in this case. That's not what React is all about. And may I add that, "Virtual DOM" or however you want to call it, will never be as fast as manual DOM manipulation done right. It's just a well documented convenience magic abstraction.
We no longer have vast incompatibilities among browsers, so we no longer use JQuery. At the same time, threads pop up everywhere titled "how do I do [this] in [Angular, React, etc.], just like it has happened with JQuery in the past. And I won't even mention framework specific "plugins" ..
The underlying problem is, the majority of people involved with JavaScript for the web platform, are afraid and/or lazy learning it. And no framework can cure this, but at the same time frameworks help us hide the pile of ignorance we have under the framework carpet.
I'm not bashing anyone, frameworks can inspire and help organize vast amount of work. But at the same time they are hard dependencies, hailed by well known developers. Sooner or later there will be new ones [that got it right this time] and the cycle of hype-wow-sucks will continue. Well they are all built with JS, so how about you take your time to learn the language and philosophize a bit on programming, state management, application structure and the capabilities (as well as the bottlenecks) of the web platform? Then you may choose any framework you like at any time and you won't be shooting yourself in the foot because you'll be using it as a tool, and not the panacea for all your troubles.