Exactly.

Say I'm having some issue with a function. I comment out half the function to see if that's where the weirdness is. Golang says "unused variable, I refuse to compile this dogshit!" I completely fool Golang by just using _ = foo. Yes, I was correct, that's where the problem was. I rewrite that section of the code, and test it out, things work perfectly. Only now, it turns out I'm not using foo anymore, and Golang has no idea because I so cleverly fooled it with _ = foo.

Now, something that could be caught by a linter and expressed as a warning is missed by the language police entirely, and may make it into production code.

Police the code that people put into a repository / share with others. Don't police the code that people just want to test on their own.