I think it's also important to point out that the 1918 pandemic, in contrast to the present one, overwhelmingly killed people in the prime of their lives. According to this study of deaths in Canada and the United States, mortality peaked at age 28:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3734171/

A graph is included, which drives the point home:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3734171/figure/...