Airline asked to ban peanuts after kid had severe allergic reaction

[Anakin McFly]

http://mothership.sg/2017/07/child-had- ... f-peanuts/

I'm kind of angry about this. Surely it should be part of the parents' responsibility to keep their kid safe, where if his allergy is severe enough that he started throwing up from other people eating peanuts, that should have been something to consider - like, look into nut-free airlines, or bring along a mask, or at least learn from this incident and do more research in future.

Peanut allergies are especially rare in Asia (tbh I don't know a single person who has it), and peanuts are everywhere in our food. This is the first time in its decades-long history that anything like this has happened on a flight, and to expect them to stop serving peanuts and perhaps prevent passengers from bringing peanuts on board because of one Australian family - who may very well never fly this airline again - feels disproportionate and self-centred.

(also can't help but think that race is an issue here; somehow I doubt that if it had been some poor person from idk China who had the same reaction, the airline wouldn't be rushing to apologise. The news almost certainly wouldn't be going international, probably because they'd never have had the audacity to make such a demand in the first place. I am a bit bitter about this and how thousands of people are expected to make adjustments to protect just one life if it's considered the right sort of life.)

[Raxivace]

This is a really weird thing for you to be mad about tbh, especially since peanut allergies are incredibly common in the rest of the world and we're all only becoming more globalized, not less.

Your racism accusations seem pretty unfounded too.

[Anakin McFly]

That's true about globalisation.

I guess my reaction is also informed by movements like BLM and the disparity when it comes to protecting individual lives vs hundreds or thousands lost daily without that same concern. But then it's always made me uncomfortable to see strangers doing so much for just one person, in some cases risking their lives just to save one guy. I'd never want anyone to do that for me.

(and on the selfish side, SIA's peanuts are amazing. They're one of the small highlights of each flight, and the prospect of never getting to taste them again makes me sadder than I expected. I acknowledge that this fact shouldn't be relevant to the discussion.)

[phe_de]

That's true about globalisation.

(and on the selfish side, SIA's peanuts are amazing. They're one of the small highlights of each flight, and the prospect of never getting to taste them again makes me sadder than I expected. I acknowledge that this fact shouldn't be relevant to the discussion.)

Indeed. And I'm sure there were smokers who got angry when airlines started to ban smoking on their flights.

Peanuts make me sick. I'm glad that all airlines I flew with recently served nut-free food.

Unless peanut- or cigarette-addicts can prove that not being exposed to cigarettes or peanuts makes them sick, they should just not smoke or eat peanuts on a flight.

And throwing racism into the mix? I can odd.

[Anakin McFly]

The airline currently does serve nut-free food to those who request it.

The question is, where do you draw the line? There are hundreds if not thousands of allergies, some just as severe; does that mean all those foods should be banned as well? What reason do we have to limit it to planes, if someone who's allergic can also get affected by walking into a restaurant or down the street? Or who stays in a hotel room where the previous tenant was eating peanuts? At what point does the ban become unreasonable?

Cigarette smoke personally makes me sick and risks triggering asthma attacks, but that's why there are non-smoking and smoking areas. I don't expect cigarettes to all be banned just because of that.

Re: racism - adding some local context, where businesses here are often especially anxious to please white customers and attend to their complaints above those of others, such that it's likely that a similar complaint from someone else might not have garnered the same attention. There are human rights violations here that lead to actual deaths at a far greater frequency than just one potential allergy-related death, and those don't get anywhere near the same rush to action. Usually they're just swept under the carpet.

[Anakin McFly]

k it's been hours and I'm still mad so it's probably not about peanuts but:

1) the mindset of "this hurts me / might kill me therefore no one else is allowed to do it", which is often inconsistently applied

2) jealous resentment of wondering what it's like to have thousands of complete strangers be invested in your survival instead of either being indifferent or hoping you die a painful death and then burn forever in hell, or cheering on and celebrating the deaths of people like you. I encounter the latter a lot because I read internet comments. The idea of someone else's life being so cherished by complete strangers who try so hard to protect them is jarring and makes me angry.

[Raxivace]

These thousands of strangers are not actually especially invested in people like the kid in the article. The employees in particular are mostly concerned about not getting sued and/or not losing their jobs as a result of someone dying and such. The people that have to give up peanuts (Or whatever else) on airline flights like that are not actually happy about that and instead write complaints on Facebook and such that are honestly not very different from what you're writing in this thread.

Like in all honesty you're treating having a potentially life-threatening allergy as if it is somehow a privilege. It is not a privilege. It is an allergy that I can 100% guarantee that the child wishes they did not have it. I can also guarantee they would not like reading your comments in this thread, where you've implied it was wrong of them and their family to even ride on the airplane. You are making the same kinds of indifferent internet comments that you hate when they're directed at people like yourself, even if you're not directly calling for people to be hanged or whatever.

[Anakin McFly]

No - I don't consider it a privilege at all to have a severe life threatening allergy, but the opposite, and I sympathize with the child in question. The privilege here is in the privilege of being heard and have people mobilize to take action to protect one's life, even if their primary motive is not to get in trouble (and honestly I'd like to think they're better than that).

An analogy would be that other thread about the unarmed white woman unfairly killed by a cop. It's unarguably a terrible tragedy, but it's possible both to be sad about that as well as angry at the disparity in how the incident was reported and the way people responded to this vs the times unarmed black men were similarly killed.

There are low-skilled foreign workers here who regularly fall ill or die due to unsafe workplace practices and employers not caring about their health. There are domestic helpers who get severely abused, starved, tortured, sometimes to death. People actually die all the time as the result of company practices, and nothing much changes. Here was one kid who almost died, and suddenly everyone is concerned when they weren't concerned about those other things. I'm not saying they shouldn't, nor to lessen the severity of what he suffered. But some lives are being valued more than others here, and that's what I'm angry about.

(also my country is pretty racist; a poll showed that about 20% of employers don't think it's racist to refuse to hire someone purely because of their race. White customers also generally get better/special treatment and have their concerns listened to more, partly because they're perceived to be rich and powerful even if they aren't.)

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Mushrooms - even the smell of them - makes me hurl. But I certainly don't expect the rest of the world to give me a mushroom exclusion zone (I don't know if it's an allergy or just an intense dislike - never bothered to find out).

If this kid has an issue with peanuts they're just going to have to deal with the fact that peanuts exist in the world and find a way to co-exist on the same planet. Expecting everyone else to change isn't a realistic solution.