One of the teachers at my daughter's day care center posted an adorable picture from the web by the front door. Titled "The Real Origin of Swine Flu," it shows a toddler happily licking a pig's snout through a fence.

For the last week or so, my daughter and I would stop to laugh at the picture whenever we came in.

So I guess we were in the right frame of mind this morning, when we found the note in her cubby telling us that a small child at the center had come down with the dreaded virus. Oops.

I placed a couple of quick cell phone calls to the other loved ones of our little germ vector and got a unanimous consensus: get out of there.

Even though H1N1, as it is now called, in deference to the swine-averse, seems far less lethal than originally suspected, no one in my family really wants to risk it. It's not death but the prospect of a cascade of cases of vomiting and other unpleasant symptoms working their way through our family that drove our decision. My mother, who used to work in child care, and now spends significant time with my kids, is ready for the long winter of serial illness to be over. Me, too.

I felt a little bad leaving the center, where the staff are cheerfully sticking it out and many families are trusting that their children will not get sick. I'm lucky to have both a flexible job and a retired grandma on the scene, so I can err on the side of caution.

But more than that, I admire how our little child care community deals with these issues, and I feel I ought to stand by them (with my elbow firmly across my nose and mouth, of course). A high quality child care center is a great model of how to handle a threatened epidemic.

When swine flu first emerged, the director of our day care immediately distributed information from the CDC, and let us know that there could be a school closing. Since it is no longer government policy to close schools, ours is staying open. We have had periodic updates on the outbreak. So the first case did not come as a complete shock.

The mixture of professionalism and a friendly, humane attitude toward the inevitable germ tide that washes over day care centers is worth noting, since Mexican officials are warning that the United States needs to deal with one of the most difficult problems associated with a new epidemic: fear among health care workers. Good information and good humor are the enemies of fear, as well as the attendant evil of social stigma attached to disease. In this country, the backlash against Mexican immigrants shows how ignorance and hysteria can turn a public health crisis into a bigger social problem. If anyone knows how silly it is to blame people for catching diseases, it's child care workers.

That picture on the wall of the toddler and the pig is a perfect symbol. Teachers and parents well know that the cutest among us are often the biggest disease-spreaders. As we walked past the toddler room at my daughter's school this morning, we saw a two-year-old boy bending down to repeatedly kiss a little friend all over the face. This is not the sort of behavior the CDC recommends during a flu outbreak. But tell that to an enthusiastic toddler.

Germs are inevitable. If we are going to come into contact with other people, we are going to meet some. So the basic, common sense advice child care centers distribute--and which you can download from the CDC web site on swine flu--applies here: wash your hands, cover your mouth and nose with an elbow when you cough, throw away those tissues, and stay home when you are sick. And try to laugh about it. Soon enough this will pass. And then it will be flu season again.