We had an outbreak of avian flu here in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia last February. Over 17 million chickens and turkeys were killed (depopulated) in order to quarantine it. The result was total chaos, with body fluids leaking from trucks hauling the dead carcases for hundreds of miles. If you wanted to spread the flu, you couldn't have found a more effective method. Crows and other carrion eaters had a feast on the infected fluids and body parts that fell off the trucks. In the end, it was contained, but it was lesson in how not to handle an outbreak.

Nobody got the avian flu, but a couple of farm workers came down with some mild flu like symptoms during the depopulation...gotta love that word...process. If we perform that poorly on chickens, imagine how we'll do with human beings.