the news media also played it on endless loops for months
in my life I've been notably traumatized first by the endless loops of the Challenger tragedy and then 9/11, I often wonder what the next event will be
I should also point out we also killed a million people in Iraq in response to 9/11 who will never ever have a memorial, Bush/Cheney would never ever have had the military enlistment to invade Iraq if it wasn't for the hype of 9/11 by the media, even Bush has mentioned it himself
Fair point, we don't televise their deaths especially in such a visceral and repeated way and therefore it can feel more distant.
I still think if we showed people dying from covid in the more gruesome way, it may have changed our response to it, just as if we show any human or being dying in a gruesome way.