Consider the pre-pandemic prevalence of "phone booths" and one person conference rooms, so you can be in a meeting as the only local attendee. As far as the other location is considered, you are remote just with access to a bigger coffee maker.
This is just a straight up lie, the speed of communication is literally 50% in real life by my reckoning. The huge vocal delay pauses, the having to focus more to get information out of low bandwidth sound, lack of body language (camera body language doesn't translate the same as in person). That's before we get to "ummmmmm.... errrr..." "Sorry can you repeat that" "oh sorry no you go first" "Oh can you mute your mic please I can hear myself" and videocall bandwidth only allowing 1 person to talk at once with a 2 second barrier either side of each thought from the sound delay and mute dance.
Literally video calls are so broken that you can't do creative discussions in them, if the tech was magnitudes better then maybe but these small delays and lack of presence make it a objectively different beast to working in the same space.
>no different than working with someone in another office
Given the choice, they'd likely prefer someone local in this case as well.
Refusing to work with people because of their office situation is toxic behavior.
How would the PM who is in remission from cancer or the engineer with a disabled child supposed to feel when someone says that they prefer to not work with them because they need to stay home?
True, but it's possible that a company had nearly 100% co-located teams prior to COVID.