Milwaukee pharmacist who tried to ruin 500 vaccine doses gets 3 years in prison: “I didn’t think they were safe”

WMUR-TV/ ABC News screenshot

The former pharmacist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who confessed to trying to ruin over 500 doses of the Moderna vaccine for COVID-19 was sentenced to three years in prison on Tuesday. He pleaded guilty to two felony counts of attempting to tamper with a consumer product, as The Blaze reports.

How did it all happen?

Steven Brandenburg, 46, was taken into custody at the end of December and confessed that he had intentionally taken 57 vials of the vaccine out of the fridge and left them overnight at room temperature. He intended to spoil the vaccine doses while he was working at Advocate Aurora Health.

In each vial there were 10 vaccine doses.

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Brandenburg reportedly said that he was convinced at the time that the vaccines were unsafe. Right after being arrested, he was barred from practicing as a pharmacist.

Moderna eventually informed Aurora Health that the doses could still be used despite being left unrefrigerated. The problem was that many individuals who had received their vaccines in the meantime, including Brandenburg’s co-workers, were left wondering if they had actually got a viable immunization.

“The act of sabotage with the intent to place my life in danger has shaken me to my core,” a colleague of Brandenburg's wrote, as reported by WMUR-TV.

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“Steven Brandenburg took the choice from me to receive a stable and known to be safe vaccine,” another said for the news station.

Before being sentenced, Brandenburg told the court he felt a great “shame’ for what he had done and accepted responsibility for his actions, the The Associated Press noted.

While prosecutors asked that he serve three years and five months in federal prison for his crime, the judge decided that he would get three years in prison and three more on probation.

“Brandenburg is an admitted conspiracy theorist. He also secretly substituted saline for flu vaccine that he was mandated to receive and persuaded several co-workers to secretly swap saline for their flu vaccine as well, according to court filings,” the news outlet added about the Milwaukee former pharmacist.

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