I do what people perceive as "sketchy" wades quite often.
What one person perceives as sketchy, may very well be completely fine for another angler. For example, I'm confident in waist deep fast flowing water while many aren't.
I have quite a few conditions for a wade.
These are based on bottom substrate, and water directly below/dangers below (waterfalls/cascades/log jams/sweepers), and river levels.
If it's mostly gravel bottom (similar to what I remember the bottom end of prison being), I will often do deep wades/fast water. This is because there is no foot entrapment potential, which is what generally kills people in a panic situation (they try to stand and their foot gets wedged). I'm fine with "deeper water" in a lot of those situations - of course depending on what kind of water is directly below me. I like to have at least 100 yards of water to work with in case something happens. If you fall, you swim. Don't try to stand back up, just beach yourself. If you swim, believe me when I say the waders have literally NO IMPACT. It's trying to stand up that kills you in waders - they are heavy and you can't stand which makes you panic more. Swim to the beach, beach yourself, and crawl up while leaning forward to drain the water out of the top (hopefully you were wearing your wading belt).
I took a couple super sketchy swims in white water last year. They were just that - swims - because I didn't panic and swam rather than trying to stand up. One, I got launched out of a raft on a drift in class 4 water. Everything happened so fast I didn't even deploy the life jacket. I just swam to the raft. The other I was walking a canyon wall and fell 15 feet into a torrent. Luckily on the second one, I was 10 feet away from the end of the wall near a gravel bar and was able to swim out before the cascade below. The second one scared me badly - and now I'm obviously more careful. Learning experience.
Obviously I'm not saying go out and swim around in steelhead season. What I am saying though, is that it's not the waders that kills you - it's panic and bad decisions. If you're not confident in a wade/have a bad feeling, don't do it. If you aren't experienced wading, don't do stupid wades. If you aren't comfortable around water, don't do dumb wades. It's not rocket science. Calling out people on a forum though for a wade they did is kind of silly. The way you often learn is by doing those wades once or twice. I bet they won't do it again, with you calling them out or not. Getting wet scares a lot of people.
It should also be mentioned that the drowning last year on this date was in extremely high water, and wasn't a wading accident.