Advocate Aurora Health pharmacist Steven Brandenburg, 46, was arrested last week on recommended charges of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, adulterating a prescription drug, and criminal damage to property after he allegedly removed 57 vials of the vaccine from its refrigerated storage area and left them out, rendering them useless. Authorities have said that Brandenburg admitted to leaving the vaccine out, according to the New York Times.
"He'd formed this belief they were unsafe," Ozaukee County District Attorney Adam Gerol said during a virtual hearing, according to the Associated Press. He noted that prosecutors haven't filed any charges yet because they're still testing doses to make sure they were actually ineffective.
Gerol said Brandenburg was "pretty cooperative and admitted to everything he'd done" and that "he expressed that he was under great stress because of marital problems."
A detective wrote in a probable cause statement that the former healthcare professional is an admitted conspiracy theorist and that he told investigators he spoiled the vaccine because he believed it could hurt people by changing their DNA.
Judge Paul Malloy ordered the accused to be released on a $10,000 signature bond, not to work in healthcare moving forward, to avoid Aurora employees, and to surrender his firearms, which he had taken to work twice, according to an Aurora employee.
The Moderna vaccine requires refrigeration to not spoil, and the vaccine is believed to be viable for 12 hours outside of refrigerated conditions. Hundreds of doses were discarded after the vials that were left out were discovered. Some were administered instead of being wasted, although Aurora health officials raised doubts about the effectiveness of those doses because they were removed from their cooled storage unit twice. Police estimate that the discarded doses were worth between $8,000 and $11,000.
Brandenburg's wife filed for divorce last June after eight years of marriage. The couple has two children. On Dec. 6, he showed up at her house to drop off a water purifier and two sets of 30-day supplies of food, telling his estranged wife that the world was "crashing down" and that the government was planning cyberattacks, which would shut down the power grid.
His estranged wife said he stored food in bulk as well as weapons and that she didn't feel safe around him. A court commissioner found that the children would not be safe in Brandenberg's custody, so he has been temporarily prohibited from staying with them.
More than 20 million people in the United States were diagnosed with COVID-19 in 2020, resulting in more than 350,000 deaths attributed to the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University's coronavirus tracker. Multiple vaccines were approved in December, and millions have been vaccinated thus far, but the rollout has gone slower than anticipated.
Reader Comments
I don't quite believe that all he did was leave some of the vaccines out of the fridge. Why not all? Who caught him? How do they not know that he contaminated all of them? Surely the only safe way is to throw all of them away.
Something doesn't add up.
Unless they are aware of a huge amount of severe adverse reactions about to hit the fan and needed an excuse? What better way to cover up the real cause which is the actual vaccine than to say someone tampered with the vaccines by leaving them out? Maybe he was posting his views online, so they made him a patsy. He has written all the evidence himself so easy to convince a jury. Throw in an angry ex wife and the guys toast.
Just a theory.
Believe it or not, such confessions probably happen in over 60% of cases, STILL!
R.C.