Sorry if this is insensitive or just clueless, but, to you and OP: If you have nothing to contribute to a meeting and have no reason to hear the things that are said at the meeting, why do you even attend? Just skip it. Maybe I'm privileged by being farther along in my career, but when I see a meeting that I don't get anything out of and don't contribute anything to, I just decline and move on with my life.

Do you really think merely having your name show up as one of 35 attendees in Zoom is really going to positively affect your career?

I used to be worried about things like face time and "they'll notice I'm gone" but I gave that worry up. I guarantee at most companies it's really not a big deal. No VP goes back to his office after a meeting and says to himself "Hmm, DroneEngineer43318 was not silently sitting at my meeting. I must ensure he doesn't get promoted next cycle!". If you're not presenting or need the information, nobody is going to care that you're absent.

A trick I've used before in a pinch is to set your monitor connection (via USB-C/HDMI/DisplayPort) as the Zoom audio output. I never use it as an output, so it's permanently muted in the on-screen menus. Since Zoom makes it fairly easy to customize audio, it can act as a simple mute effect.

You can mute individual applications in windows volume mixer (right click speaker icon in the taskbar, click open volume mixer). I don't know if there's a Mac equivalent but I would be really surprised if there wasn't.

Ubuntu Desktop: Settings->Sound

There you have per application volume control

If you're on Windows, the app EarTrumpet provides easy access to per-app audio controls. It should really be included with Windows.