scaremonger

noun

1. Someone who spreads worrying rumours or needlessly alarms people.

   “I have refrained from giving actual names and dates, for obvious reasons, and have therefore been compelled, even at the risk of being again denounced as a scaremonger, to present the facts in the form of fiction—fiction which, I trust, will point its own patriotic moral.”

verb

1. To spread worrying rumours.

   “We're not scaremongering / This is really happening, happening”

   “If no new cases come from the Buff Club exposure site, it will be hard to believe politicians scaremongering that the delta variant is so infectious that all you have to do is walk past an infected person to get it.”