So the pneumonia is caused not by the original virus but by an opportunistic bacteria?
Pretty much so.
Pneumonia is the filling up of the lungs with fluid causing difficulty in their functioning.
It can be triggered by a variety of other things.
I suffered it at the age of 25 when I had pleurisy, which in itself is a simple thing, a pimple for want of a better word on the pleural sac that surrounds the lung. As the lung expands it rubs against the pleural sac but if there is a pimple, that triggers absolute agony when attempting to breathe, so the lungs slowly fill up with fluid that you've been unable to expell,and it's then a bit of a vicious circle. I had one lung full and the other only at 50% capacity and was near death by the time it was diagnosed (that took 4 days) but a simple dose of strong penicillin fixed it. Great for weight loss though, I shed almost two stone over the almost three month recovery period in my case, I went from a svelte 12 down to skin and bones 10 stone, though the thrush caused by the penicillin was like philadelphia cream cheese...
