Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real reason is that people are too poor to care about pollution or those dead people, same as anywhere else in the world. Actually, the poorer the country the less people care about the environment or infections. It's the same with covid too, it's the government which had to force close the economy.
What makes you think "people" have anything to do with deciding whether to do anything about air pollution? As I mentioned in another comment, no individual without billions of dollars behind them can do anything whatsoever about air pollution. Do you really think even, say, middle class Americans could take on the US government, one of the top 10 greenhouse gas polluters in the world? Maybe I'm just amplifying your…
Without capitalism, the government is very unlikely to create wealth (look at China's PRC which had to embrace state capitalism to make money).
China, the largest polluter in the world, is an interesting example: despite their economic success, people's living conditions didn't improve as much and caring about the environment lagged behind the rest of the world.
Until ~2010 China's pollution was a state secret, now that there is a bit more wealth and citizens are more aware we can expect the PRC to do something about it.
Africa is another example of a poor, polluted country.
Ultimately, pollution can be a phase in a growing economy, but if you let technology to run its course, people will eventually move to non polluting tech - because they want to live in a nice world.
If you stop or regulate the economy, or try to come up with a solution, things will take much longer. Nuclear energy is a solution that, without political backslash, could have become our source of clean energy long ago.