based on my limited experience i would say data loss isn't that big an issue. you might choose to drop the logging when rejoining, but the rest stays around fine. the scenario would be when you get the original publisher back you make it stand alone and then join the cluster.
recovery is (at least in my experience) often dropping one and rejoining it later as subcriber.
i see this as an option to make sure you get an clearpass you can do configuration on if the primary publisher fails for some reason. but as you mention doing that then manually is also an option.