Hacker News Reader

Why would you expect them to be closer? The respective government responses were very different - the UK initially decided to to pursue a "herd immunity" strategy - i.e. do nothing to stop the spread of the virus. In contrast, the Irish government locked down early and hard - the UK lock down occurred later (once the significance of the threat became more obvious) and even then introduced lock-down measures more gradually.

There are different governments and health services in Northern Ireland and Ireland, and they've taken different paths in their actions and messaging.

England has London, Scottish cities aren't on the same scale.

There also appears to be a pretty huge immigrant/racial skew in ICU and death cases for unclear reasons, conjectured to be vitamin D related. This is likely also skewing Sweden vs their neighbours, given Sweden's enormous migrant intake.