Bad luck. A small country or state has an higher chance of being an outlier. 11M people live in Belgium, and a lot of +/- 10M inhabitant regions in larger coun

Bad luck. A small country or state has an higher chance of being an outlier. 11M people live in Belgium, and a lot of +/- 10M inhabitant regions in larger countries have an higher death rate (Paris, NYC, Lombardy, Madrid ...). If you live in a large country, some highly impacted regions will be offset by less affected regions.