I got it.
The debate, such as it is, seems to be comparing apples and oranges.
Your position, firmly and honestly held, boils down to the willingness to take suicidal risk as your own business. If the rider were the only person impacted that I could agree with that as an absolute. I do not think that is the case, but then my survey sample gives me a bias. In my experience not every rider who is hit, slides on a oil patch, or suddenly discovers someone in his way on a country road dies. Some of them live. Most with brain injury. It's hard to express how ugly that is for the person trashed and their family. Almost all of them end up on public assistance after exhausting what they thought was adequate insurance, bankrupting themselves and their families.
The argument for society imposing helmet laws is the same argument that applied in imposing seatbelt laws. A minimal intrusion on liberty saves lives (that's the selling point) and reduces the burden on you that injuries and deaths from collisions imposes on you. We do not let people die on the public street from lack of care anymore. We do not let gunshot victims bleed to death (thus the irony of vicious gangsters getting some of the best and most expensive treatment) we do not let the brain injured rot too badly. That common decency costs us. I'm happy to pay it; I would also like to keep the total bill down. (Yeah, I think the helmet laws are a necessary evil.)
The lack of comprehensive data for motorcycle fatalities and serious injuries makes most discussion, other than pointing out the gap, pretty useless. We need to go beyond the Hurt/USC study. Miles ridden by all riders (by survey), hours ridden (by survey), where ridden (by survey), tickets issued against all riders (what violation, age of rider; pullable from DMV records), total number of reported accidents/collisions (DMV records cross referenced to insurance records), helmet use (by coroner/ med examiner, paramedic or police report cross referenced to insurance reports), protective clothing use, deaths of rider, deaths of passengers, deaths of other motorists, deaths of pedestrians (don't laugh, those are messy), same sequence for severe disability, same sequence for plain injury. Blood alcool levels of all participants. Drug use by all participants. I suppose that would be a start.
Looking at large sets of data will show things that no one suspected. Life is like that. Neither you nor I can predict them. My position could turn out to be wrong, the cost per mile ridden to society may not be effected one way or another by helmet use. Or it could be so large that you, reluctantly concur with me. Who knows? Let's go find out. That is the only rational and decent thing to do.
Until then all we can individually do is what we individually think best. Ride carefully. It's good to have you around.