Plenty of libraries have functional components and a react-like experience without the need for a virtual dom. Lack of vdom does not necessitate imperative dom usage.
It’s the same observation TDD makes. If you can figure out what a sane interface looks like, it doesn’t matter how it’s implemented underneath. You might even want to change your mind for performance or new feature purposes.
lit-html is similar to the render method of a react component, uses a declarative html'esque syntax, and doesn't use a VDOM AFAIK.
No one is saying update DOM elements manually. They're saying there's better strategies for view libs than VDOM.
That's kind of an entirely different paradigm, considering lit is a Custom Elements framework.