While botulism is a terrible illness, its actual incidence is very rare compared to how many scary warnings about its dangers are made to amateur cooks at any chance possible. In fact, I have never made my pickles and hot sauce because I am now irrationally and deathly terrified of botulism.
Here's some real numbers: between 1976-2009 there have been 3618 confirmed cases of botulism in the USA. 100 per year. You have one in 3,400,000 chances to get botulism if you live in US in any given year. And I bet the vast majority are from eating spoiled or contaminated industrial tinned food, rather than people making hot chili sauce.
EDIT after rereading the research: of 3618 cases of botulism, 109 were fatal. Of these fatal cases, 61 were due to foodborne botulism. In 33 years. That's a probability of ~1/170,000,000 per year to die of botulism in the US.
Here's some real numbers: between 1976-2009 there have been 3618 confirmed cases of botulism in the USA. 100 per year. You have one in 3,400,000 chances to get botulism if you live in US in any given year. And I bet the vast majority are from eating spoiled or contaminated industrial tinned food, rather than people making hot chili sauce.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5460764/
EDIT after rereading the research: of 3618 cases of botulism, 109 were fatal. Of these fatal cases, 61 were due to foodborne botulism. In 33 years. That's a probability of ~1/170,000,000 per year to die of botulism in the US.