VMs are not different due to 'magic' but through hardware assist with things like Intel VT-x and AMD-V:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization#Hardware-as...
* https://blog.lyc8503.net/en/post/hypervisor-explore/
* https://binarydebt.wordpress.com/2018/10/14/intel-virtualisa...
VMs are considered vastly better because the surface area where exploits can happen is smaller and/or better isolated within the kernel.
If you are arguing the latter is not true — and we are all collectively hand-waving away big chunk of the surface area so that may be the case — it would help to be explicit in why you believe an exploit in that area is similarly likely?
> A CVE next week that allows corruption of host state that affects eg every VM under a particular hypervisor will be no less damaging than this CVE is to containers
Yeah this almost never happens though whereas Linux privesc is 10x a day.