The flagged comment implied thinking vaccines work is a religious belief. It’s not.

Instead it’s based in observable evidence. I’m reasonably sure quantum mechanics, relativity and chemistry work because my cell phone relies on them, and there are reproducible scientific experiments that test those theories. The same is true of vaccines.

If we were well into Trump’s 25th term in office, and no other living being had seen a cell phone turn on, but some underground cult worshipped broken iPhones, then you could argue they had a religious belief in things like relativity and quantum mechanics.

That’s not the world we live in. Hell, Mitch McConnell is apparently old enough to remember that Polio vaccines work. (Which is why they let him vote against RFK.)

> What insane is how people on the left have recently developed an almost religious level of faith in statements about pharmaceutical safety from media corporations for whom pharmaceutical companies represent the largest source of advertising income

I don't agree with the OP's partisan take on the issue, but nowhere was it said that it takes religious belief to think that vaccines work.

“religious level of faith” implies there is not a mountain of publicly accessible evidence showing vaccines are safe and effective, and that instead these people’s beliefs are neither provable nor refutable.

I know of no other reasonable definition of religious beliefs.

It's a lot simpler than that. The point of the argument is that some people take the word of these companies without questioning that there might be an alternative motive that doesn't take their safety into account. This would be a "religious level of faith" as it implies a dogmatic adherence to what some person is saying.

It has nothing to do with believing vaccines work. It's simply taking things they say with a grain of salt because capitalist forces often encourage them to do the wrong thing.