I understand what you're saying about how the keys are stored and what Ledger did, but all HW wallets have secure elements, do they not? Those things I don't know much about except that the HW wallet manufacturer (as you stated) should never be able to access the keys stored in said secure element.
And a lot of pesky redditors were going on about no HW wallets being completely safe now, precisely because they all contain those secure elements, and they were talking about open-source ones like Trezor, Bitbox, and a bunch of others.
Almost all the popular brands have secure elements. Trezor is an exception to that group you mentioned. That's one reason why Trezor suffers from that unfixable seed/pin extraction vulnerability that allows someone to get to your secrets with quite cheap hardware equipment. Obviously, they would have to know what they are doing.
Regarding all hardware wallet with secure elements not being safe anymore is also a point I was trying to make indirectly in the Ledger Recover thread where we discuss the incident. People don't seem or want to see the bigger picture. Hardware wallets were presented as the ultimate long-term storage devices for your keys that prevented remote access. Secure elements were supposed to be impenetrable for regular Joe's. Turns out that neither of that is true. Ledger showed us that with their Ledger Recover feature. A differently coded firmware allows you to send your keys to 3 companies in the world using a combination of Ledger's software and hardware.
They got bashed hard for it, and rightly so. The way I see it is that all manufacturers selling hardware wallets have dishonestly represented their products as having a safe enclosure for your private keys. They don't, so they are all lying. They are all just remaining quiet hoping their community won't start asking, how the hell can private keys be sent via the internet, and why do you and your product even exist?