jQuery is not an alternative to React or Vue. It's an alternative to vanilla JS.
When you're writing something that doesn't obviously need everything a reactive app framework like React offers the question you need to be asking isn't "Do I need React or do I only need jQuery?", it's simply "Do I need jQuery?". These days, unless you need to support very old browsers, most of the time the jQuery code isn't that much simpler than writing plain old JS.
React and Vue are geared towards solving a specific part of that problem.
Without a very good reason, most developers shouldn't be trying to solve the problems Vue and React solve in jQuery/JS. Of course, some will want to and nothing's stopping them, but I wouldn't recommend it for _normal_ projects.
That's a much clearer way of explaining the point I was trying to make.
Advocating ignorance seems, I don't know... ignorant?
The only sound argument for JQuery when not using react/vue/Ang. is the plugin ecosystem.
Otherwise current browser techniques (document.querySelector/All, fetch, map/reduce/filter/some etc) with polyfills does a better job.
Vue is definitely lighter than jQuery, and the reactive model with components tends to work better. Also you don't need any building process (Babel, Webpack, etc) unlike React. You can perfectly write your templates in the DOM.
That said, for some use cases I still prefer using vanilla or a Cash (a jQuery replacement).
I believe there is a use case of every technology. There are use cases where React/Vue makes sense, similarly, there are still use cases where jQuery can be useful.