You might want to add Ireland to your Europe graph. It is now higher than UK and much steeper. Portugal is also running parallel to UK since Dec 28 (in log levels).

Actually in general, how do you decide who is in vs out? Netherlands and Denmark are still on the decline.

Every means tested program also adds to the implicit marginal tax rate. If benefits phase out as you earn more, it is as if you are being taxed at a higher rate.

Here are some more details from 2009, I'm not sure about the situation now. And it's hard to analyze nationally, because it depends on state and local programs as well.

You highlight the growth in UK cases, so I tried to make a rudimentary way of tracking such growth in other, affected countries.

https://cov-lineages.org/global_report.html - https://archive.is/Tq5cb - Keeps track of which countries have tested positive. ( https://twitter.com/AineToole posts when new reports come out)

OurWorldInData of said countries (dropping Australia): https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?yScale=log&zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-09-17..latest&country=GBR~PRT~ITA~DNK~IRL~ISR~NLD~NOR~FRA~ESP&region=World&casesMetric=true&interval=smoothed&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=new_cases_per_million&pickerSort=desc

Findings

• Ireland seems to be on a steeper path than UK, although they are starting from a much better position.
• Israel is as steep, but predates the UK, so presumably from other reasons.
• The new variant doesn't seem to show up in the others yet.