Apparently killing people is not the taboo it used to be. Even 20 million lives currently threatened by the PEPFAR shutdown is hardly registering in the public consciousness here in the West.
20 million lives were threatened before politics changed in stupid ways and they will continue to be threatened after. It is an abstract concept to most people. If you operate your car unsafely - for instance by driving drunk and crashing into a fire truck - you will rapidly find out how quickly that registers in the consciousness of members of the public in a very concrete manner.
Case Luigi is orthogonal to this. Mass manslaughter by bureaucratization seems to be vivid enough to many people.