When you're running NPM tooling you're running libraries primarily built for those problems, hence the torrent of otherwise unnecessary complexity of polyfills, that happen to be running on a JS engine that doesn't get a browser attached to it.
[0] - TC39 member who is self-described as "obsessed with backwards compatibility": https://github.com/ljharb
[1] - Here's one of many articles describing the situation: https://marvinh.dev/blog/speeding-up-javascript-ecosystem-pa...
It's true that there are a few people who publish packages on npm including polyfills, Jordan among them. But these are a very small fraction of all packages on npm, and none of the compromised packages were polyfills. Also, he cares about backwards compatibility _with old versions of node_; the fact that JavaScript was originally a web language, as the grandparent comment says, is completely irrelevant to the inclusion of those specific polyfills.
Polyfills are just completely irrelevant to this discussion.