[pby]

Having studied the matter, do you think life threatening allergies like your kid has, at least the numbers reported, are a recent phenomenon?

It is certainly increasing in frequency.

[Ramius]

It may seem to be increasing in frequency, but that might be another illusion. It didn’t used to be that news items were all national. Most stuff stayed as local news before the days of 24hour cable news.

Stories about allergies wouldn’t have been “news” back when news only ran a half hour every evening. But now with many vacuous hours to fill... All sorts of things become “news” that really aren’t.

[Ramius]

It may seem to be increasing in frequency, but that might be another illusion. It didn’t used to be that news items were all national. Most stuff stayed as local news before the days of 24hour cable news.

Stories about allergies wouldn’t have been “news” back when news only ran a half hour every evening. But now with many vacuous hours to fill... All sorts of things become “news” that really aren’t.