FWIW, I'm the current Redux maintainer, and that is an absolutely horrible and unfair description of how Redux was created.
Elm was _an_ influence on Redux, but there were many other influences as well. Dan Abramov's prior experience did include some VB (possibly VB.NET, I think), but also a lot of actual JS.
See the actual "History of Redux" and "Prior Art" docs pages, and a couple of my blog posts, for an accurate description of the influences that led to Redux's creation: