You know, many writers have what is called a Swipe File. They collect and sort words and phrases, sentence fragments, thought connectors, clever little writing tricks, that type of thing. It speeds things up of course, and brings variety. Here is an example of what one might look like.

The point is, that Guardian guy clearly has a section in his swipe file called "Chaotic Covid Catastrophe" full of all his favorite buzzwords, collected from all the other journalists and from every other disaster denoscription he has read in recent years. (Perhaps.. he had a target to use them all before the year ended and he's behind on his goal, so now he churns out fear porn at a million volts per minute, swiping from his swipe file for all it's worth.)

When you see a paragraph like his, you can know for sure he was scouring his word lists, giddy like a girl in spring.