Also please drop the ad-hominem.
Contact lenses are a high risk medical device. Contamination or mis-use can cause serious permanent damage. Wanting to prevent permanent damage is a good thing.
Now as different countries had different policies for decades now, we can compare the health outcomes of these policies. My personal opinion is that the rules can be relaxed in the US, but I don’t have all the data and am not a policy expert.
Characterizing contact lenses as “high risk medical device” is completely ridiculous. Pencils can cause serious permanent damage. There is no evidence that expensive yearly exams are necessary. The fact is that technology almost completely replaced the need for these people and so they built themselves into the medical system.
There is a risk classification system for medical devices. Most regulatory bodies have put contact lenses in the moderate to high risk category. E.g. the FDA classifies contact lenses as Class 2 out of 3.
You don’t put pencils in your eye for hours every day. The fact that most people use contacts just fine does not mean that there are no risks. If you want to know about them, talk to an eye doctor, they all have horror stories about contact lenses.
> Characterizing contact lenses as “high risk medical device” is completely ridiculous. Pencils can cause serious permanent damage.
No, it's not. That's a terrible slippery-slope argument and you know it. Contact lenses are an FDA Class II medical device. They are *designed* by the manufacturer for contact with the eyeball. A pencil is not.
> There is no evidence that expensive yearly exams are necessary.
There is a mountain of evidence suggesting that contact lenses can cause permanent blindness when used incorrectly. Feel free to search for it.
Also, contacts are not a high risk medical device. Only a moderate risk.