When the Spanish flu was killing people, we had no antibiotics for any secondary infections involving bacteria, we had very little access to IV technology for hydration (that took off in the 1950s), and aspirin was considered new, cutting edge treatment for fever.
The high death rate for Spanish Flu says a lot about the medical situation in 1918. For equivalent death rates today, you’d need a disease significantly worse.
I admit that poor areas in China may be living today like it was still 1918. That’s not good for them. But the US is unlikely to see much death from this. Sure, anything is possible. But the media does hype this stuff every year. I don’t panic when the boy cries wolf.
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I disagree; people got so sick, so quickly, from the 1918 flu pandemic that it was not unusual for people to die within 2 days of symptoms. Many people died of cytokine storm, which is basically the immune system going on overdrive. No vax or antibiotics would do anything for that, even if avaialable. Also the sheer numbers of sick people would even now completely overwhelm health facilities, as many patients would get so sick they need much higher level of nursing care, even in the 2009 H1N1 flu, many patients needed ECMO machines and there are very few, and require very skilled nursing. (Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation).
https://uihc.org/health-topics/family-guide-ecmo
Even the H1N1 of 2009 caused death by organ failure in heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys. Bad flus can do VERY bad things not all of which are treatable with antibiotics or antivirals. Or in time.
My grandmother told us, about her first husband, he had a sore throat and two days later he was dead.