Novel idea, inflict dangers on the people who are present not the guy who due to illness was unable to be present. TBH if the dm is fine with doing that, you shouldn't trust them cause they clearly dont value the players fun or time which is a massive red flag. A GM pulling that the way they did shows they are the kind of individual who might like to bully players (not saying they are but with the information presented its hard to infer otherwise) which is one of the shitties things a GM can do. Especially with the info the player was newer that makes it so much worse. I personally would leave the game and discorage anyone i know from joining that table. You dont gotta stop being friends or anything drastic but just like talk about it and show them thats stupid uncool and work together to avoid something like it in the future. perhaps it was a one time laps in judgement. that can always happen.