As parents send young children back to school and pack their older ones off to college, the government’s warning of up to 90 thousand U.S. deaths this season from H1N1 flu has given many of us pause. Germs and people go together; turning classrooms, dorm rooms, and cafeterias into giant-sized Petri dishes for the virus’s spread. H1N1 flu viruses– like noroviruses which cause vomiting and diarrhea – are able to maintain the infection cycle by spreading through the interaction of people who cough and sneeze, transmitting the virus by droplets in the air or their contaminated hands.