I read your comment as saying essentially "ok, it's business as usual, and hasn't yet changed", i.e., acknowledging a fact, and possibly acknowledging that it's likely to continue in the future (which is true).
I read their message as saying the same as you say, but also stating a value judgment - i.e. that it should be considered weird that hasn't changed, that it should have been changed ages ago (definitely before 2017), and that it should be considered unacceptable if it continues in the future. Which is quite a different story about the same facts, and this part of the story is efficiently implied by the short prefix "It's 2017 but..".
In the UK we have the Equality Act 2010 to protect people with mental illness at work; we have several large scale anti-stigma campaigns (EG Time to Change, or the Blue Light worker stuff); it's common to find mental health covered by occupational health schemes.
With all of this some people still find it tricky to disclose their mental ill health to their employers.
People have an expectation that everything is going to magically improve as time goes on without realizing that with some things they need to be the change that they want to see in the world.