There are more and more frameworks that avoid the VDOM but still resolve this fine. As long as DOM mutation is handled by the framework (and not done ad-hoc), and as long as the framework has a mechanism for deferring those mutations until after all reads, then there shouldn't be a problem. This is the approach taken by SolidJS, Svelte, and even the new rendering model for VueJS.

In all these frameworks, mutations happen inside effects, and effects are scheduled such that they all happen at the end of the tick, avoiding reflows and thrashing.