[jammies]

In other news, more than 20 000 people die each year in the USA of the common flu. Where are the campaigns to quarantine flu sufferers in bubbles? Should there be mandatory flu testing before getting on planes, trains, buses and other forms of public transportation? If your kid has the flu, shouldn't the law be able to keep him/her at home by any means short of lethal force? I mean, compared to 100-150 peanut allergy deaths every year, that's a BIBLICAL PLAGUE!!!!!

Yes, it's tragic that there are people with peanut allergies. However, statistically even a chronic sufferer is much more likely to die in a car accident than from inhaling peanut dust or being exposed to some other source of peanuts, so I question the need for draconian peanut regulations to protect people from what is realistically a vanishingly small chance of death. Further, why not ban wheat products, fish products, eggs, or other common foods that provoke allergic reactions - if peanut allergies are so dangerous that you can't eat a PBJ in the same room as a sufferer, surely the scarfing down of hundreds of slices of wheat-based bread in the school cafeteria has the potential to slay a wheat-allergic child like a bullet to the head?

I suspect that while there ARE people who are severely allergic, the vast majority of people who are allergic are only mildly so, and the hysteria far outstrips the actuality of the danger.