Funny, Qagdop, I was always thought you were a Mercotan…
Last I heard, allergies were running about 20% in the population as a whole, of varying severity.
A LOT of people have an allergy but don’t whine, complain, or moan about it.
I think there’s a significant number of people who DON’T have an allergy but claim to for various reasons - vegetarians claiming to be “allergic” to meat, people claiming to be “allergic” to alcohol, other folks claiming allergies to food they just don’t like to eat… These folks do tend to be loud and geeky.
And severe allergies can result in some social isolation. My food allergies, for instance, do pose problems with social forms of eating and make people avoid having me over for dinner at their homes. Severe hayfever may make a person want to spend a lot of time indoors in a controlled climate.
As a result, the people with loud hypochondria or genuine severe and limiting allergies are the ones you notice. Both types tend to have geeky characteristics. The large number of quiet, non-geeky but allergic people don’t show up on your radar screen.