This looks greatly exaggerated.
We already had a bird flu about 15 years ago and it turned out to be relatively minor.
The 1918 Spanish Flu is hard to compare to today, because:
1) There were no antibiotics, and many of the deaths were ones which would have been prevented had they existed.
2) There was zero understanding of viruses at the time. They didn't even advise people to wash their hands!
The one weird thing about that flu was that it mostly killed healthy 20-40 year olds, rather than old people.