If a fresh user were to spend a few minutes learning React (or Preact), Svelte, Vue, or Angular, they'd almost definitely pick the terse and simple API of Svelte, or Vue, over the others. I've in fact tested this with a number of Junior and Senior developers.
Every language has downsides and upsides, some people find interpreted languages easier to hack around with than compiled ones, but the sheer speed of Svelte's complilation (especially when you try out the new HMR stuff) really excludes Svelte from this anyway.
Your other point is about every component having it's own runtime. This also isn't correct. Have a look at the code outputted from the REPL to see the "runtime" (which is just a set of shared functions in pure javascript) being declared. These are global to your entire Svelte app. It's as close as Svelte gets to a runtime, and it's shared.
As for changing data somewhere and looking how it all renders differently, that's what the Store is for. It's a cross-component store of data, and if you change it, dependends will render differently.
It's not that there's no merit to your article, it's just that a lot of it applies to most development languages, and it would be silly to call them all unappealing. Upsides and downsides, that's all. And my personal feeling about interpreted frameworks like React or Preact is that they offload the downsides to the user, which is unnacceptable.