A 30mm zoom would give the same perspective as a 30mm prime. I think the parent post was talking about telephoto vs wide-angle perspective distortion, not zoom vs prime.
Lots of pros moved to zooms, 2x-7x f2.8 are pretty common for example
A telephoto lens isn't the opposite of a wide angle lens, it's a type of design for lenses with long focal lengths, not all long lenses are of telephoto design
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephoto_lens