Then you may have misunderstood or misremembered the problem statement. From the original article:

What's the least bad, bad thing that can happen? Well, suppose a dust speck floated into your eye and irritated it just a little, for a fraction of a second, barely enough to make you notice before you blink and wipe away the dust speck.

So we're not talking here about something that incapacitates the victim's eye for the better part of a minute.

(I don't know that you mis{understood,remembered} the problem statement. Maybe you had a Nasty Dust Speck experience and this made you update your position on Minimal Dust Speck experiences.)