[BlargMcLarg]

>but how is that too much otherwise?

Because people lack discipline, will powder Scrum meetings on top of existing meetings, create more meetings from stand-ups because Scrum doesn't teach individuals to be disciplined, drag out the meetings, etc. Scrum's entire premise of "get everyone together and talk" is the very thing which encourages people to talk. A lot. Without providing any suggestions to counteract it beyond "draw the head of the owl, now draw the rest"-type of advice.

>And how is having meetings a negative thing for remote work?

Meetings imply synchronous communication. Author is conflating remote with asynchronous, but nothing about the story implies collaboration needs to be synchronous / meeting-heavy either.