The community lives in a bubble and is out of touch with mainstream software development.
The industry has needed good alternatives for a long time. Finally, they're coming, and not nearly soon enough to suit me! :-)
I consider Rust more pragmatic at this point. Perhaps it's because I code in C++ as my dayjob and have to deal with the consequences.
In theory, C++ is perfect given perfect developers. In practice, it's more sensible and realistic to write tricky, like multithreaded, code in Rust.
One rarely mentioned important factor: fear. It's much less scary to modify something written in Rust than in C++. Doubly so for less experienced developers.