You can see an overreach of the same effect in public attitudes toward the space program: death counts that would go unremarked in heavy construction projects are considered intolerable because the dying astronauts are heroes to us.

It may be significant that their deaths are associated with projects which are not only highly visible but orders of magnitude more expensive.

I suspect that if we decided to build a proper Tower of Babel, and people died in the construction, their deaths would get plenty of publicity.