That’s not what I took from it, but even if that’s what was meant, I think I’d have the same reaction. In terms of abstraction implementations, a class is just a different expression of the same idea of encapsulation.
I still don’t think I’d react differently. A function is an abstraction layer. Maybe this is just me being unintentionally obtuse because I’ve worked so long in environments where functions or collections/modules of functions are the primary organizing principle, but when I encounter “premature abstraction” arguments I don’t generally understand them to mean “sure take those three repetitions of the same logic and write a function, but think really hard about writing a module/namespace/package/class/etc”. Am I misunderstanding this?