[GnuThere]

Who knows what really happened to this poor girl? She may have had bacterial pneumonia and sepsis which were either misdiagnosed or not yet apparent when she saw Urgent Care. When I first saw this story, I thought it was a stretch to say she died from the flu, but I guess it’s possible.

[silverleaf]

In 1918 the young and strong got sick in the morning and died by night
Their own strong immune system killed them
Cytokine storm

https://www.livescience.com/35867-flu-triggers-deadly-immune-system-storm.html

[exDemMom]

Who knows what really happened to this poor girl? She may have had bacterial pneumonia and sepsis which were either misdiagnosed or not yet apparent when she saw Urgent Care. When I first saw this story, I thought it was a stretch to say she died from the flu, but I guess it’s possible.

She developed a bacterial pneumonia directly as a result of having the flu. It is fairly common for people who have the flu to develop secondary bacterial infections, which they would never had had if they were not sick with the flu. The linked article claims that the secondary infections develop as a result of a "weakened" immune system, but since I am a scientist, I find the explanation inadequate. I think that the immune response to the viral infection interferes with the immune response to bacteria, and that leaves people more susceptible.

In any case, the short answer is that she died as a direct result of having influenza. She would not have caught pneumonia otherwise.