Close your good eye was a joke back in the the day when I designed programs to turn lasers on and off. They had to be tested in a secure lab with everyone protected by special optical googles matched to the laser under test. The lab door was locked so no one could wander in by accident and get blinded.
I believe viewing a solar eclipse is risky if you remove your eyesafe protection at the moment of totality because it is not precise. You don't know exactly when the sun will peek out again. In order to be safe you need to keep your protection on for the entire event. Suppose you have to supervise children at the same time.
I am surprised that some people in the modern world believe that a solar eclipse is an omen of something bad soon to happen. But this is silly because eclipses happen periodically as predicted by science. The earth, the sun, and the moon are in motion all the time. They are unaffected by human concerns.
