alt Hacker News> I'd say the same thing about asthma and food allergies too, seems that half the kids today are allergic to something, need inhalers, etc.
I mean, if you were deathly allergic to eggs in the 1800s, you died. Very early.
If smoke sent you into respiratory distress, you died. Very early.
Or see the "left-handedness epidemic". It is probably not massively more prevalent now than it was in 1900s, even if that's what the stats say. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-overall-rate-of-left...
No real argument, but I'm not talking about that long ago. When I was a kid, lots of parents smoked, in the house, in the car, everywhere. My father did. Yet I don't remember any of my friends having asthma or using inhalers. Peanut allergy is very common today, among my kids friends, several of them had it. Was almost unheard of when I was a kid, schools served peanut butter often at lunch. Nobody was ever asked what food allergies they had.
It's possible my anecdotes are not representative, but this is just what I have observed.