It is amazing, but not surprising. People are vastly more reactive to the things that provide immediate feedback.
What we see, hear, touch and taste provide feedback that is simple for people to process and understand.
Appreciation of long term future loss or damage is not programmed into humans particularly well. We are biologically designed to worry about the present, we dwell on the past (far too much), and the future is something that might never happen (the old adage; you might be hit by a bus).
We see this every day with people that smoke cigarettes. Every single smoker knows that smoking is going to put them in an early grave, but they still continue, because the short term pleasure to the senses, outweighs the perceived long term risk.