I ended up purchasing a MacBook Air M1 with 16GB of memory. I couldn’t justify a minor bump in performance (arguable none in most use cases) with something that has a Touch Bar (Pro).
With that being said, I have had camera covers on all of my laptops for years. I recommend the same for everybody; they're cheap, easy to use, and can easily be installed/removed.
I joined a @MicrosoftTeams meeting with my camera off. Shortly after joining, my camera (and its light indicator) turned on for a few seconds, and then it turned off. I was hands off the keyboard at the time waiting for others to join. Rather disconcerting.