When a pharmacist discovered 57 vials of Moderna vaccine left to spoil outside a Wisconsin clinic fridge in December, the worker immediately suspected his colleague had posted bizarre false claims, according to court records.
For several months, Stephen Brandenburg, a night pharmacist at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wisconsin, has said that he believes the vaccine will harm people, make them sterile, and grow them with micro-strips.
For several months, Stephen Brandenburg, a night pharmacist at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wisconsin, has said he believes the vaccine will harm people, make them sterile, and grow them with microlides.
Now, federal authorities say the belief in the false claims has gone beyond the vaccine. The pharmacist, who has agreed to plead guilty to charges of trying to spoil the vaccine, also believes the Earth is flat and the sky isn't real, according to court documents.
His beliefs were revealed in a search of the Brandenburg phone, computer, and hard drive recently opened in court by the FBI.
The documents include interviews with Sarah Stecker, a pharmacy technician at the Brandenburg and Aurora Medical Center, who told authorities that they discovered uncooled doses of the Moderna vaccine at around 3 a.m. on December 26. Unsealed records were first reported by The Daily Beast.
According to court records, "Brandenburg has been very involved in conspiracy theories."
Brandenburg's lawyer Jason de Paltz declined to comment on the Washington Post late Sunday.
Prosecutors said the pharmacist removed 57 vials each containing 10 vaccines of the Moderna vaccine from hospital fridges on the nights of December 24 and 25.
Brandenburg told authorities that on the first night, he left the vaccines without cooling for three hours before putting them back in the fridge. The next day, he said he removed the vaccines again, which Sticker found after they had gone without refrigeration for nine hours.
The accident prompted an investigation by the FBI, the Grafton Police Department, and the Food and Drug Administration.
The hospital had to eliminate nearly 600 doses after the accident. On December 26, fifty-seven patients received the Moderna coronavirus vaccine that Brandenburg had left out of the fridge, according to court records.
A hospital official told investigators that they would not have used the vaccine had they known it was removed from the refrigerator on December 24.
The hospital, which launched an internal investigation based on Stocker's findings, said it "initially led to the belief that the accident resulted from an" unintended human error. "
But authorities said on December 30 Brandenburg admitted to intentionally removing the flasks.
"I did this with the purpose of allowing the vaccine to be outside the temperature range so that it would not be effective," Brandenburg said in an email to Aurora's health investigators, indicating that he believed the vaccines "would be harmful to individuals receiving treatment. On him."
On the same day, Advocate Aurora Health announced that Brandenburg was no longer working in the hospital.
He had "had an interest in conspiracy theories" for the past seven years, Brandenburg said in a separate interview with the Grafton Police Department and the FBI.
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