Community rules

It wasn’t until the 1980s that the first national hand hygiene guidelines were published. 130 years after Semmelweiss discovered that washing your hands saved lives. It doesn’t cost anything and it is something that the entire community benefits from. We become so used to these rules like having speed limits or a 40-hour workweek, that we forget it didn’t always used to be this way. It’s only when the system fails that we ask, “Who is in charge here?”

It has always been on the community to decide what it is we are willing to tolerate. And it will continue to be the community that decides what we are willing to allow going forward.