My condolences for the loss.
One of my best buds is a 25-year emergency room doc, and the director of medicine for 7 area hospital emergency rooms in the NW Houston area. He says that the viral infection that occurs with this flu, attacks the lungs and causes a fluid buildup which prevents the absorption of oxygen into the bloodstream leading to asphyxiation from drowning. There is no way to evacuate the fluid from the lungs safely, and no way to oxygenate the blood by other means.
He says patients arrive to the ER with a high fever, bodies weak and dehydrated, an inability to catch their breath, have a very low oxygen-level in the bloodstream. Folks can go from talking to the ER personnel about how they feel to dying, in a matter of an hour and a half. No amount of antibiotic or medical treatment is affective against a viral infection that has made it into each of the 4 quadrants of the lung. The scary thing, is even the best doctors and hospitals are powerless once this illness progresses in this way. It happens so quickly.
I once had an endoscopic procedure go bad and stomach fluid was aspirated into my lungs causing bacterial pneumonia. When I awoke at 3 am and made it to the ER gasping for air, my blood-oxygen level was at 65%, and had I not gone in right then, would have been dead by 5:00am. Scary stuff. Thing about pneumonia of this kind, is that my body had already begun to fight it off, and I was still relatively hydrated and strong. With heavy-doses of oxygen and antibiotics, followed by a special steroid designed to repair lung tissue, and a week and a half in the ICU, I can type this post to you now.
This is what many people my doctor buddy encounters on the job get confused about when they are literally watching their family members dying before their eyes. Bacteria and viruses are two totally different animals.
Make no bones about it, this is a bad thing, this flu.