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349 points zdw | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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forgotoldacc ◴[] No.45652698[source]
There was a period of a few decades (I guess still ongoing, really) where parents sheltered their kids from everything. Playing in the dirt, peanuts, other allergens. It seems like all it's done is make people more vulnerable as adults. People assume babies are super fragile and delicate, and in many ways they are, but they also bounce back quickly.

Maybe part of it is a consequence of the risks of honey, which can actually spawn camp infants with botulism. But it seems that fear spread to everything.

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rtpg ◴[] No.45652797[source]
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" makes for a fun little statement. It's not actual natural law though, right? I feel like it's fairly well documented that good hygiene is a win for humanity as a whole, so I have some skepticism for generally saying "well let the kids eat dirt". We did that for centuries already!

The thing I'm a bit curious about is how the research on peanut allergies leading to the sort of uhhh... cynic's common sense take ("expose em early and they'll be fine") is something that we only got to in 2015. Various allergies are a decently big thing in many parts of the world, and it feels almost anticlimactic that the dumb guy take here just applied, and we didn't get to that.

Maybe someone has some more details about any basis for the original guidelines

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birksherty ◴[] No.45652947[source]
> Various allergies are a decently big thing in many parts of the world

Maybe we live in bubbles.

I am from Asia. I have only seen people need to be taken to emergency hospital in American tv shows for any allergies. Here I've never seen it in my whole life and didn't even know allergy can be this dangerous. We don't have peanut allergy too. First time even I saw it in TV, I was very confused.

Allergies do exists here, but "not to the extent" like what I've seen in American TV shows or heard online.

Only thing I remember is people need to take medicine for to allergy from venomous caterpillar hairs, they mistakenly touched those. And stung by honey bees, wasp etc.

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mock-possum ◴[] No.45653268[source]
If it makes you feel better I’m nearly 50 and I have never in my life heard of people needing to take allergy medication for mistakenly touching caterpillar hairs.
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1. birksherty ◴[] No.45659746[source]
That one incident was serious, the person slept over a caterpillar getting stung all over body. Here all caterpillars have venom in hair. Personally I've touched many times by mistake, but didn't have to take medicine, the itchiness & swelling goes away within a hour.