> it’s like saying there are two photons because they can come in two polarizations

The article claimed exactly that! It said, "Not everyone counts these different chiral and polarization states as distinct particle types. Yet it’s logical to do so, because they affect how particles behave and interact."

At one point the author reaches a particle count of 118. This corresponds to the degrees of freedom of the on-shell physical states (polarizations, spin orientations, colors, and antimatter) of all particles in the Standard Model. As you say, it's misleading to call this a count of different particles.