What's the advantage of this over using JSX? You can already go JSX->virtual-dom https://www.npmjs.com/package/virtual-dom-jsx, and the fact that it's "vanilla" JS doesn't mean much as it's ES6 which needs Babel.
I think the parent's point is that to use template strings today one would have to use Babel, which already supports JSX. Thus the number of dependencies is the same in all scenarios: Babel + virtual-dom, or Babel + T7.