zucchini: lack of photosynthesis?

I took the advice of the internet when I found moldy mildew on my zucchini leaves, I "removed and destroyed all affected plant parts." It seems I waited too long to figure out this problem, as much of the plants were infected. Look at what I'm left with...

BEFORE

AFTER!

It was after the fact that I sat back and looked at what I did (pruned 90 % of the leaves!) and thought: "hmmmm.... how does photosynthesis happen if there are no leaves???!!"

We'll see if my zucchini still grow, or if new leaves quickly grow to replace them.

I suppose, next time, I will remove all the badly infected parts, and spray all the not-so-bad parts, to make sure that sunlight magic still happens.

For now, I may have just killed my zucchini plants :( At least I harvested at least a dozen for this year.

PS: just read that maybe pruning is ok. The internet said only to leave a few leaves, and to prune when the plant has produced about 4-6 zucchinis. Prune mainly the big leaves and do it close to the main stem, but never cut a stem, as that makes the plant more suceptable to disease.