Well, yes :-).
During the eclipse, all kind of idiots get crazy about eye damage and protection, making big scare of it (which sells), like there is something so bad that you need to hide, instead to watch this amazing effect!
I heard in sone places they hid school children in basement to protect them! Incredibly stupid.
They may be some accidents during (partial) eclipse, since more people look at Sun as usual, but that’s it.
But even during partial phases, there is LESS Sun than usual.
And, during the total eclipse, the Sun is about as bright at Moon. No damage in any way possible
You MUST take OFF any eye protection during the totality, otherwise you will miss a lot!
Yeah, I didn’t have any dark glasses for the eclipse in 1979. I took a good look while it was total, and then when the edge of the sun appeared again, I quit looking directly at it. The concept of not looking directly at the sun without enough filtering is not that difficult to grasp.
Since we’re most likely not going to travel to see the total eclipse in April and I don’t know if we still have our eclipse glasses from 2017, we’ll probably just use a pinhole projection setup. Maybe I’ll borrow the neighbor’s welding helmet; I used one of those to view a partial eclipse in 1994 with no ill effects.