it's another subplot, here - it initially looked like this was going to be brutal in iran, and then sweep through the middle east. concerns about the reliability of the data out of iran aside (and that's not an accusation, exactly), we haven't really seen that happen.

well...

i know that there's some reasons that syria, yemen and iraq are a little lower.

but, the point is what it is.

in order to see substantive mortality for a disease that mostly affects old people, you have to have high enough life expectancy for people to get old, first.