No, this passage is describing the care they needed.
It doesn't make any sense as an interpretation to jump right to death if you look at what the passage actually says. They died because they couldn't clap their hands? They died because they or their caretakers didn't smile enough (gladness of countenance)? They died because they didn't get enough gentle encouragement from their caretakers (blandishments)?
This was from a list of fucked up things Frederick II did written by a guy who hated him. If the kids had died as a result of the experiment, surely it'd say so. It's just saying the experiment was a a failure (labors were in vain) because of course they did not spontaneously start speaking Hebrew, Greek, Latin and instead had to rely on nonverbal communication.
If someone says "I can't live without my phone," they aren't going to literally drop dead one day if they forget it at home.
If you have a source laying around for info on the kids' deaths, I'd take it.
That's true and part of me would love to see that, but some utilities (such as water and electric) going under would probably be a bad thing if there wasn't a plan to swoop in and bring them under public control right away. Otherwise, things would get bad really quick in a lot of places if power and water stopped being available for everyone for an extended time. Things like hospitals, grocery stores, repair shops, etc. would all be working at greatly reduced capacity and capability. Barring a full-on revolution where the people could seize these utilities for public ownership and operate it themselves, I don't see that happening because the government would be likely to simply bail out a lot of the companies, or they'd be bought up and probably end up being consolidated by an even fewer number of people.