I couldn’t disagree more. You can see if people are agreeing, disagreeing, confused by something someone said, even if they won’t say it out loud. There’s a million important and valuable cues that get lost when people do meetings without a camera.
Ans “work was done by voice alone for decades” is just not true in any significant way. Most teams that needed to communicate and have meetings regularly were in the same room. People flew (and still fly) around the planet to have a single meeting with a group of people.
I’m just a student and employee, and therefore in no position to make anyone behave in any particular way when it comes to Zoom calls. But I think it’s rude and uncomfortable to have work meetings or lectures to a faceless crowd because someone “isn’t comfortable on camera”. If you don’t enforce any minimum etiquette for such meetings, it all just converges on the least effort, lowest engagement, minimum communication version because every person who drops off camera makes it creepier for the remaining ones to talk to a bunch of black rectangles.