Us humans suffer from expectations of outcomes and that lowers our defences from having done the same routine many times, and having had successful outcomes routinely. Success breeds complacency, but it still better than having too many unsuccessful outcomes. This isn't normalisation of deviation, it is the fact that we get comfortable with what we are doing.
Do we bother anymore with the simple flaps/trim/pressurisation/spoilers? And if we do, (and not because we are OCD..) do we always do it? How often do we forget completely a checklist, or forget to complete a checklist? ECL's assist in that regard, but even ECLs can be overlooked.
Passing 10K, there was a time that the pressurisation was always checked, seems like a fair time to do a final check, but then if we are distracted in the first place, we may well be distracted for the next set of defences.
Systems relying on multiple switch selections to achieve the outcome, and where those also get done during relatively high workload periods have the need for good independent alerting systems in order to have reliability. Without that, we will occasionally prove that the flight crew are indeed human.
The barotrauma may well have occurred from re-pressurisation, the rate of change would probably be higher, but the sinus hates decomp if blocked, ears blow wax out in that case, but re-press on the ears can mess up the inner ear mightily. All are options, but you may have a sound point. That is the reason we do low rate descents after completing the emergency descent... As an aside, one military jet I fly is unpressurised, and that goes up to 35K occasionally, mainly I top out at 25K. Doing vertical manoeuvres with no press is interesting the first time, but really doesn't cause much discomfort, and that is at ROC/ROD around 15KFPM at 350-450Kts vertical. It is less fun than a 2.5" diff but it doesn't seem to hurt IF you don't have a cold. A percentage of every cabin is going to have compromised sinuses etc, so injuries are going to happen in a decomp/unpressed event.
I wouldn't be shooting the crew for being human. They are probably the least likely crew to ever climb unpressed in the near future.