A Houston-area mother is facing criminal charges after she allegedly put her child in the trunk of her car because she thought the child had coronavirus.
“According to the DA’s office, Sarah Beam, 42, was at a COVID-19 testing site at Pridgeon Stadium on Falcon Rd on January 3 when officials were alerted her teenage child, 13, was in her car’s trunk,” Fox 26 reported. “According to charging documents, Beam said her child was in the trunk because they had previously tested positive for COVID-19 and as a result, wanted to ‘prevent her[self] from getting exposed to possible COVID while driving [the child] to the stadium for additional testing.’”
Beam was charged with child endangerment, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
“Cypress-Fairbanks ISD Director of Health Services Bevin Gordon alerted police of the boy in the trunk after interacting with Beam, 42, at the Pridgeon Stadium testing site on Falcon Rd on January 3,” the report added. “Gordon told police that she witnessed Beam unlatch the trunk and found the 13-year-old was face down inside.”
Beam, who most recently taught at Cypress Falls High School, has been placed on administrative leave.
The news comes as the U.S. has shattered global records this week for new daily coronavirus cases, despite Democrat President Joe Biden’s pledge to “shut down the virus.”
“No, I don’t think COVID is here to stay, but having COVID in the environment here and in the world is probably here to stay,” Biden said. “COVID as we’re dealing with it now is not here to stay, the normal doesn’t have to be. We have so many more tools we developed and we continue to develop that can contain COVID and other strains of COVID.”
Biden’s comments about how he thinks coronavirus is not “here to stay” and that his administration can develop strategies to “contain” it do appear to challenge the advice that Biden was given by six experts this week.
Six former advisers who counseled him during the presidential transition wrote this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association that it was time for Biden to change strategies to something geared toward living with the virus.
“The authors are all big names in American medicine. Several, including Dr. Luciana Borio, a former acting chief scientist at the Food and Drug Administration, and Dr. David Michaels, a former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, have held high-ranking government positions. The driving force behind the articles is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist, medical ethicist and University of Pennsylvania professor who advised former President Barack Obama,” The New York Times reported. “They say the first thing the administration needs to do is take a broader vision, by recognizing that Covid-19 is here to stay. In one article, Dr. Emanuel and two co-authors — Michael T. Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, and Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease expert at New York University — pointedly note that in July, Mr. Biden proclaimed that ‘we’ve gained the upper hand against this virus,’ which in retrospect was clearly not the case.”
The CDC reported that on January 20, 2021, at 1:16 p.m., there were 400,306 deaths recorded in the U.S. from the coronavirus. Biden officially became president of the United States at noon on that day.
Since then, the number of people who have died from coronavirus under Biden’s watch is now well over 429,000, according to recent figures.
This is a developing news story; refresh the page for updates.