... my point is that humans undervalue harms that are seen as less acutely, physically brutal ...

i think you've excellently summed up the reason why horrible things like a genocide are allowed happen; so long as we're not allowed to witness the atrocities in the media and we dehumanize them, we will never understand the needful visceral reaction to stop it.

So the risks are undervalued and both intentionally and unconsciously minimized. The result is most of us who’ve seen the inside are quietly horrified and that’s the end of it.

i wonder if something like the Hippocratic Oath could help; but then again the same physicians to took the oath committed atrocities & human rights violations under the eugenics programs/pushes that that the united states suffered from in the early to mid 20th century.