Most likely someone was being sarcastic. The Spanish Flu pandemic from 1918 to 1920 infected approximately 30% of the world's population at that time or 500 million people and killed approximately 40 to 100 million of them. This is a death rate of between 8% to 20%.
The unusual thing about that strain of flu virus is that it seems to have been most deadly to young adults with strong immune systems. The unusual thing about the name of the flu was that it did not originate in Spain, but the effect of wartime censorship gave people the impression that it was disproportionally affecting Spain which started the misnomer.
This outbreak appears to be a far less deadly strain of infection and more effective treatments will probably be devised over the next few months but there is a good chance it will put a strain on our health-care system next year. And of course the Democrats are hoping and praying that it will become a wild card in the election.
Re: Spanish Flu morbidity rate of 8% to 20%
In the USA, morbidity was 2.5%.
The USA infection rate was 30%, which was the world average.
From memory, about 30 million Americans were infected, and about 750,000 died.