Clearly. The helicopter is doing just fine. You don’t have to stare down if you’re a pilot. You can, you know, look at the horizon. Jeez the amount of boot licking here.

Ummm... Laser pointers get diffracted by the intervening distance, and as a result, one does not have to look directly at the emitter to receive a blinding flash.

Also keep in mind, these are helos, meant to hover in close proximity to things, which generally requires good visibility, often surrounding the instrument panel.

Furthermore, unlime most aircraft, helos are dynamically unstable. Think of it like balancing a spinning plate. If they get the tiniest bit off kilter, they continue gettting more and more off-kilter unless actively corrected.

A fixed wing aircraft could potentially nose up and safely fly on until vision returned, but a helo requires active management by the pilot to do the same, which requires vision. Helo people are fond of a saying that "planes want to fly, helos beat the air until it complies".

In short "just don't look at it" isn't as effective a countermeasure as you'd like to believe.