“There are not legitimate religious exemptions [to COVID vaccinations] because the leaders of all the organized religions have said there is no legitimate reason,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared in defense of her COVID vaccination mandate. “I’m not aware of a sanctioned religious exemption from any organized religion. In fact, they are encouraging the opposite,” she added. “Everybody from the pope on down is encouraging people to get vaccinated.”

When Hochul’s mandate went into effect on Tuesday, thousands of New York healthcare workers who chose for a variety of reasons not to get the vaccine lost their jobs. Ironically, last year’s widely celebrated healthcare “heroes” — celebrated for continuing to go to work facing the possibility of contracting a novel and potentially deadly coronavirus for which at the time treatment was still a gamble — are today’s zeros, at least according to the likes of Governor Hochul. They are expendable, not for any reason regarding their work, but simply because they refuse a vaccine.

Perhaps Hochul views herself as a religious leader. Over the weekend, she went to the church of the “Covidians” and preached a message equating the COVID vaccine with the Gospel:

I’ve prayed a lot to God during this time. And you know what? God did answer our prayers. He made the smartest men and women — the scientists, the doctors, the researchers — He made them come up with a vaccine. That is from God to us. And we must say, “Thank you, God, thank you.” And I wear my vaccinated necklace all the time to say, “I’m vaccinated.”

All of you, yes, I know you’re vaccinated. You’re the smart ones, but you know there’s people out there who aren’t listening to God and what God wants. You know this; you know who they are. I need you to be my apostles. I need you to go out and talk about it and say, “We owe this to each other. We love each other. Jesus taught us to love one another.” And how do you show that love, but to care enough about each other to say, “Please get vaccinated because I love you. I want you to live. I want our kids to be safe when they are in schools. I want you to be safe when you go to a doctor’s office or to a hospital and are treated by somebody. You don’t want to get the virus from them. You’re already sick or you wouldn’t be there.”

We have to solve this my friends. I need every one of you. I need you to let them know that this is how we can fight this pandemic, come back to normal, and then start talking about the real issues that we have to. Fighting systemic racial injustice which exists today, and if there’s a denier I will take you on any day, because I’ve seen it. I know it exists and we’re not going to have a blind eye to this ever again any longer under my [watch].

If you ever wondered if leftism is a religion, wonder no more.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to mitigate the shortage of healthcare workers hospitals and nursing homes in New York are now facing, Hochul signed an emergency order allowing medical personnel from other states and even other countries to come in to help fill the sudden vacancies her vaccination edict created. Furthermore, Hochul has called on the National Guard to help fill gaps, all while she continued to defend her mandate: “Holding firm on the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers is simply the right thing to do to protect our vulnerable family members and loved ones from COVID-19.”

Now, New York hospitals and nursing homes that in many instances already suffered from staffing shortages are now being propelled into an avoidable crisis, thanks entirely to Hochul’s unnecessary vaccine mandate. We call it unnecessary because some 92% the state’s hospital and nursing home staff have already been vaccinated. President of Albany Medical Center hospital Dr. McKenna lamented, “It truly is a crisis; there’s no two ways about that.” More than 200 of his hospital’s 11,000 employees were suspended without pay on Tuesday over their refusal of the vaccine.

But New York is not the only place healthcare workers are being laid off for refusing the COVID vaccine. Personnel in many other states have been similarly terminated. Representing some 190 healthcare workers fired in Minnesota, attorney Greg Erickson contended: “You’re talking about people who held the hand of people dying of COVID. These folks risked their lives to help these patients and now they’re being terminated because their religious beliefs won’t allow them to take the vaccine? It’s really sad.”

The fact of the matter is, Hochul and other vax apostles are acting like religious zealots for whom the ultimate sin is refusing the vaccine. Furthermore, these “Covidians” presume to speak for all religions in declaring that no one can appeal to their faith or conscience as a rationale for objecting to the novel vaccine. The irony here is that it was some pro-vaxxers who made the issue about religion in the first place, asserting that the loving thing to do was to get the vaccine, as if there were no other option. Is it any wonder that people, both religious and nonreligious, have pushed back against these vaccine tyrants?