Weird World anti-vaxxers conspiracy theorists

An anti-vax conspiracy theorist fell for an obviously fake Latin translation of AstraZeneca, and got owned to the stars and back

Oonagh Keating. Updated May 15th, 2025

Back in 2021, Nebraska-based chiropracter Dr(?) Ben Tapper was one of the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s Disinformation Dozen – a group of people responsible at that time for sharing two thirds of the false claims on social media, relating to the vaccine and the origin of Covid-19.

Four years later, it looks like he hasn’t turned over a new leaf, because he’s still banging that old anti-vax drum, and this time he’s pissing off the classicists.

Ben Tapper tweet in which he writes - Well, that's interesting. With a 'screenshot of Google translating 'a stra ze neca' from 'Latin' to English, with the result being 'a road to death'

You won’t be surprised to learn that Community Notes entered the chat.

Google’s translation is incorrect. “A stra ze neca” is not valid Latin. Stra and ze are not Latin words, Google Translate often mistranslates gibberish. AstraZeneca was formed from a merger between Astra AB (Latin word for Stars) and Zeneca Group (no linguistic origin).

We don’t know why Google Translate is making up utter bilge, but we do know that AI can be tricked into believing anything if it’s told it enough, so that may be a possibility. Whatever the cause, Tweeters poured scorn on the conspiracy theorist’s post.

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