Remember that story about Steven Brandenburg, the Wisconsin pharmacist who intentionally spoiled hundreds of doses of vaccine at his workplace? It was later reported that not only was the act not an accident but that he’d done it in an attempt to save the country from some evil plot by Big Pharma to change everyone’s DNA. That’s right. Brandenburg was an avid conspiracy theorist. Well, a month into the investigation, the story gets even stranger. The former pharmacist’s odd beliefs weren’t limited to thinking about government plots to control its citizens. He is also reportedly a believer that the Earth is flat and a lot more besides that. (WaPo)

For months, Steven Brandenburg, the overnight pharmacist at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wis., had said he thought the vaccine would harm people, make them infertile and implant them with microchips.

Now, federal authorities say his belief in debunked claims went beyond the vaccine. The pharmacist, who has agreed to plead guilty to charges of attempting to spoil the vaccine, also believes the Earth is flat and that the sky is not real, according to court documents…

“Brandenburg was very engaged in conspiracy theories,” Sticker told law enforcement, according to court records.

Jason D. Baltz, Brandenburg’s attorney, declined to comment to The Washington Post late Sunday.

When the news initially broke about this guy, the police weren’t being very specific about which vaccine conspiracy theory Brandenburg favored. I did some searching at the time and found the two most popular ones. One was the idea that the messenger RNA or mRNA in the Moderna vaccine was going to mutate human beings. The other was the idea that there are microchips in the vaccine that the government will use to track us all.

I made a guess at the time that the pharmacist was more likely to believe the mRNA theory. Turns out I was wrong. His coworkers say that he believed in both of those theories and frequently told them about the dangers.

But as I mentioned above, Good ole’ Steve also thinks the Earth is flat. But he ups the game considerably by further claiming that “the sky isn’t real.” That one was new even to me and I listen to a podcast about Bigfoot every week. I tried fishing up the details for you but couldn’t track that fake sky theory down. Perhaps Brandenburg made that one up on his own and it just hasn’t caught on yet? I did manage to find one claiming that the moon isn’t real, however. It turns out that the moon is a simulation that was put there to block out the view of the killer planet Nibiru. (Don’t ask me. I just report. You decide.)

It’s just a shame that Steve never got the chance to meet ‘Mad’ Mike Hughes. He too was a flat-earther and he was so convinced he was correct that he built his own rocket to fly up high enough to take pictures of our flat planet and prove that NASA has been lying all this time. Mike’s rocket wound up crashing and killing him so that didn’t work out so well. That might have tipped Steve off and he wouldn’t be involved in the mess he finds himself in now.

How prevalent are some of these conspiracy theories? Plenty. While hardly majority opinions, you don’t have to look far down the rabbit holes of Reddit to find very active and popular communities who share all sorts of “information” on such topics. And Steven Brandenburg is proof that such groups can attract people with advanced educational degrees and responsible professions. As far as the outer space stuff goes, follow this link to the Space.com website for a collection of the most enduring conspiracy theories in that field. Or at least NASA would like you to think they’re just conspiracy theories.