> You're going to tell me that it's "science illiterate" to consider mRNA therapy as gene therapy, because the genes are not actually changed ..

Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. Read your sentence back to yourself.

> But it is "scientifically literate" to call such a therapy a "vaccine"?

Yes. Of course it is. Regardless of what the copy on some obscure CDC website says, mRNA vaccines have been in development for decades.