The West has mostly lived in peace and prosperity since 1945. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that this is not a natural state of events. I think this has led to a certain sort of hubris, that everything will turn out well and we don't have to make the hard decisions.

But plagues and pandemics were a thing in the past. So were wars. And man-made ecological disasters.

Ukraine has not lived in peace and prosperity since 1945.

Hence, "mostly".

Ukraine is not the West. Outside the West, everything has been business as usual.

weak men, hard times, etc.

Hard times just kill people. That saying is crap.

Doesn’t make it false. Don’t have to like it. I don’t.

To me, fearmongering is something specific. People fearmonger about climate change when they act like nothing can be done or that no action will be good enough. It's a form of nihilism. COVID, same deal - people who spent months trying to use shaming and guilting of people, at the expense of those who got sick who weren't being reckless/antivax/whatever are fearmongerers. Those who are just concerned and aren't acting as a mouthpiece - very different. Let's not do a 180 on the social acceptability of being an asshole; there are upper and lower bounds to be observed.

Climate change is real as is COVID, but the "fearmongering" part is, that the people who are telling you to take it seriously (politicians, top 1%, celebrities) are not taking it seriously themselves (partying without masks, flying private jets to Davos, ...).

Therefore, while climate change and COVID might be real, most of the proposed solutions are completely fake.