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You got that right. Even the nasty flu thing that wiped out so much of the population back in 19whatever, only managed to do about that much damage. Fast forward a several decades, and we have much, much better scientific and medical technology

But we also have a much, much more mobile population. In the 1910's, there wasn't much in the way of an airline industry. People traveled by train or boat and, for the most part, really didn't travel much at all. That made containment / quarantines much easier. Today, a similarly virulent bug could spread far and wide before anybody noticed it (particularly if it has a long incubation period).

At least for H5N1, there is one possible treatment, Tamiflu, but there isn't nearly enough supply of it and the company who holds the patent is being overlay protective of its rights. Taiwan has already announced that it's going to ignore the patent. Whether Tamiflu could be available in sufficient quantities to have any effect on H5N1 is an open question, as is whether H5N1 would be truly nasty or not. For all we really know, it may just manifest itself as a standard winter cold for large chunks of the population. The BBC has a nice FAQ on the topic.