[itsoktocry]

Good question.

The idea that coming into contact with a seed could kill you seems insane and terrible. Yet where are all the people dying of this? Is the implication that our prevention is so good we are somehow avoiding it? I'm also skeptical.

I'm not denying that it exists, but common knowledge (you literally can't eat peanut butter at school) indicates it's so common. How could this be?

The solution is to stock epipens everywhere.

[throwup238]

> Yet where are all the people dying of this?

Based on this metastudy titled Epidemiology of anaphylaxis in Europe, they found the prognosis was:

> Case fatality rates were noted in three studies at 0.000002%, 0.00009%, and 0.0001%.

That's among all cases of anaphylaxis, so the answer is "they are almost nonexistent". It's not even a rounding error. Something on the order of a few dozen people per year for a country the size of the UK and from what I can tell, most of those are due to administration of IV medication where the allergy was previously unknown and much more severe.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/all.12272

[kortex]

I think part of the confusion is that food anaphylaxis isn't automatic death sentence in all cases, but the risk is that it could be. I have a peanut allergy and carry an epipen. I've been exposed ~5 times in my life but it never was severe enough to deploy it, and instead took benadryl and closely monitored it with epipen in hand and 911 on speed dial. I also know people who eat their allergen occasionally because they just get hives and it's worth it as a treat, and I know people who had severe asthma in minutes after a cross-contamination and needed the epi.

It's just game theory. It's like asking how many metaphorical empty barrels do you want to add to your Russian roulette revolver before you are willing to risk it, the reward being basically "ordinary food". Oh and the risk can suddenly one day go from just causing hives to severe anaphylaxis at a much smaller dose.

Most people who learn of a sensitivity (I learned in elementary school after breaking out in hives from doing art involving peanut shells, the horror to think this is something schools just did!) just don't want to know that badly how dire their allergy is and assume it's life threatening, because it's not worth it to be cavalier.