Either he's feigning ignorance over why anybody would be the slightest bit empathetic toward the death of Eric Meyer's daughter or he's too much of a robot to actually understand.
You can make an argument that HN must be 100 percent on-topic, at all times, and that it doesn't belong here. But you can also argue that we are all humans and we can just accept it once in a while, even here.
To jump to the conclusion that it's all just for show, and nobody will actually take any sort of real action is pure cynicism. People have actually been affected by this, in ways that are certainly small in comparison to the the way the Meyer family has been. The most visible gestures might not accomplish much, but many people are actually donating money to charities that have a very real impact.
