Here it is: good ol' "Whataboutism", I almost had hope that one discussion could survive without someone going "wait, what about this other thing that people know and probably care about, but is completely irrevelant to the current conversation at hand?" but ah well, today just wasn't the day, I guess.

Seriously tho, to borrow your first sentence: I can't help but read something like "But how about the actual death of physical people and their physical communities" and think...are people just incapable of caring about two seperate issues of different scales at the same time? I don't know, maybe I'm weird because I don't suddenly think of the all starving people around the world and bring them up when the topic of the closing of the food joint a couple of blocks down gets brought up by the regulars...