Perhaps that guy has either got the hint at long last or your boss might have had a quiet word in his ear about his constant doom-mongering, gossiping and 'drama queening' about wars and the like, and warned him to tone things down a bit as it might be having detrimental effects on his fellow workmates around him.
Reminds me of a client at my previous day centre who was a right gossiping drama queen and an interfering busybody who about 15 years ago who turned up their one morning saying that 'gangs' of school kids had been rioting in our town the day before and they were being pursued by armed police in 'riot' vans, but it turned out to be one of here BS fairy tales as nothing of the sort actually happened; probably just a handful of teenage kids typically running amok on their way home from school, as they sometimes do, but with no real harm done, and the police vans were probably driving around for completely different reasons, totally unrelated to that fictional/imaginary 'disturbance'.
Sorry for straying off-topic but I couldn't help giving an example of one of my personal encounters/experiences with so-called gossiping 'drama queens'.
Back to the actual thread topic. In the meantime I've noticed nearly everyone in this country still seems to be going about their daily businesses and routines as per usual with no signs of anything out of the ordinary nor anything untoward being apparent up until now.