Last year at this time, my mom wrote lists of ingredients needed for her planned baking projects — including cakes for a daughter, a granddaughter and a great grandson, all with January birthdays. She collaborated with a neighbor to organize a rosary service to be held at her home for friends devoted to the prayer form. And her hairdresser continued to show up at her house Fridays at midmorning, as the woman had done during the entire 2020 pandemic lockdown.

When I chided her about the Grand Central Station aspect of her house that brought a steady flow of people into it — all possible COVID-19 carriers — she waved me off. “What do you know? I still know more than you,” she said, reminding me that despite all, I was still the kid, and she, the mother.

All through 2020, I worked to dismantle the disinformation from Fox News she’d heard. At the beginning of the pandemic, because of disinformation, she believed the virus a hoax. After pandemic related deaths of friends and relatives, she believed it to be “like a bad flu.” At the end of 2020, I discussed the flu, pneumonia and the forthcoming COVID-19 vaccines with her, to no avail.

When she called me at work last January to tell me she’d declined the COVID-19 vaccine, I wanted to yell at her. In her 90s, she had been among the first to be offered the lifesaving shot. Instead, I tried persuading her with facts about the vaccine and the virus. We hit an impasse, prompting me to reach out to my older brother for help. She had always listened to him, and to my relief, after speaking with him, she’d agreed to get the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine as soon as it became available.

Except time ran out. Exposed to the virus in early March, she died within a month, after a valiant battle. Her loss felt sudden and traumatic, puncturing the hope we had that she’d be tough enough to survive it. At 92, alone in the ICU room, she died of disinformation as much as of COVID-19.

But she wasn’t alone, not really. She joined what is today more than 900,000 Americans who died of COVID-19. How many Fox viewers my mom’s age made ill-informed choices based on the misinformation tripping off the tongues of fully vaccinated talking heads with goals of profiting from the ratings? Considering Fox’s audience skews older, it seems like the great betrayal of a generation accustomed to believing that news stations delivered truthful, objective stories.

A Kaiser Family Foundation study released in November 2021 found strong ties between the particular news outlets that people trusted and the amount of misinformation they believe. Those who trust MSNBC, local news, CNN and NPR have the facts on COVID. Those who follow Fox, hold many misconceptions. It’s easy to see why my mom and others believed this misinformation when hosts like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham compared the number of coronavirus deaths to the number of flu deaths, suggesting they’re the same, all the while knowing the higher COVID death rate. Ms. Ingraham referred to media responsibly covering the pandemic as “panic pushers.”

My mom is also among nearly 6 million people worldwide who have died from this pestilence, covering the globe with a blanket of grief. Never mind the unintended, non-COVID deaths suffered by those unable to access care for heart attacks, strokes and any number of life- threatening events because COVID patients overflowed health care systems.

Yet, despite the shocking global death toll, in the U.S. too many people still willfully refuse vaccines, trusting instead unproven remedies such as swallowing horse de-wormer (ivermectin) or unsafe uses of bleach, hydrogen peroxide and other disinfectants. Too many eschew wearing masks, giving rise to the “Karen” phenomenon of misinformed people causing ruckuses in stores requiring them. The unmasked and unvaccinated offer the virus a fertile breeding ground for variants, such as the omicron variant now plaguing us. Consequently, other variants will appear and wreak havoc, like an invading army, empowered by finding refuge to refuel, regroup, relax and to rise up to attack again.

When I find myself filled with rage and hate for the willfully ignorant — those who refuse to wear masks, those who decline the vaccine — I remember that they are, as my mother had been, purposefully misguided by disinformation, aided and abetted by those who politicized the pandemic for their own gain. People like my mother simply served as their disposable pawns, collateral damage in an effort to gain or hang on to power.

We are all one population — the vaccinated and unvaccinated — tied together in a never-ending cycle of COVID-19 variants. To break this cycle, we must exercise grace toward the misguided and misinformed, and instead meet them with compassion and empathy, knowing that the death toll in the U.S. touches as all. Anger and hatred toward them will only backfire. After all, they are our family members, neighbors and friends. In my case, it was my mother, who last year at this time, still breathed.

Rosalia Scalia (info@rosaliascalia.com) is the author of “Stumbling Toward Grace,” (Unsolicited Press).