So what happens to people who are affected by this? Are they just out of luck and have to find another device or try to unbrick their chromebook somehow?
If they stored any data locally it's lost unless Google releases a way to allow a computer in this state to repair itself. Fortunately for many users the ChromeOS convention is to keep important things stored on the cloud. But that's not much comfort to those who chose to have experienced data loss due to this.
The description of 'bricking' in this case is unwarranted. Their device is fine following a 'powerwash', essentially a factory reset.