Here is a chart of deaths per 1,000 people during the Spanish flu, by time (I think for the UK). Note that the maximum death rate was the Fall of 1918.
Looking at past pandemics suggests that influenza follows a wave pattern. The first wave shows low lethality and that is followed a few months later by a much more lethal strain of the same virus.
Influenza has great capacity to adapt to its host and this need for an adaptation period is what gives rise to a change in lethality.
The evidence form the 1918 pandemic is that those exposed in the first wave built resistance and were not affected by the second more lethal wave. So getting infected during this first wave my not be the worst thing in the world.
