You can view this as a metaphor for bigger things than peanut allergies (though those are no fun either.)
Food allergies fell 38% in the US after a 2015 change in guidelines suggested parents should give their children peanuts from a young age. Peanut allergy incidence in particular fell 43%.
In much of the West, previous advice was to minimize exposure to allergens such as peanuts to avoid reactions. But epidemiologists noticed that allergies were lower in countries like Israel where peanuts were part of infants’ regular diets and changed the recommendations.
Thank Bamba for that one. A staple Israeli snack often fed to kids. We relied on it back in the day.
The obsessive efforts to prevent peanut exposure did not work, exposure did. We went through something similar with COVID. And in the realm of ideas, we’re still stuck between safetyism and exposure.
Now exposure is not always the answer. You don’t give an adult with severe allergies the trigger. Nor did you want to spread COVID to 95-year-old asthma patients around May 2020. And not all ideas should have mass exposure either. But in the long run, exposure is generally healthier for a society than suppression.
Exposure to limited doses early on can protect and create stronger people with better resistance.
Lately we had taken to building a society of safe spaces, trigger warnings and echo chambers. In the process, we lost our immunity to bad ideas and bad people.
The results are all around us.
