Unfortunately that fix doesn't apply to this situation. I checked, there's no security issue, intervention, or block as described in that thread. I can open the COM port which is instantiated on my Mac using Serial. The COM port appears, and there's no problem opening the port. It's only the Arduino IDE that can't see it.
I had another ESP32 board (a Wroom 32D) with a CP1202 serial USB port, tried that. It's the exact same symptom. Identical. The Mac sees it, other programs can access it, just not the Arduino IDE.
BTW, I'm using the latest Arduino IDE 1.8.16.
I appreciate the try, thank you.