New York City’s former COVID adviser bragged about breaking his own lockdown rules during the COVID-19 pandemic to host drug-fuelled sex parties.
Dr. Jay Varma was secretly filmed when he bragged about how “pissed” New Yorkers would have been at the time if they had learned of his rule-breaking escapades.
Varma, the former deputy commissioner of the New York City Health Department, served as senior health adviser to then-mayor Bill de Blasio and was responsible for managing the city’s pandemic response.
He no longer works for City Hall but confessed to the Post that he “participated in two private gatherings” between April 2020 and May 2021, insisting the just-released recordings were “taken out of context.”
“I had to be kind of sneaky about it … because I was running the entire COVID response in the city,” Varma told an unidentified woman last month, the New York Post reported.
He confessed his actions in hidden-camera conversations with an “undercover operative” from the conservative podcaster Steven Crowder’s Mug Club.
The edited footage, recorded between July 27 and Aug. 14 in New York, was released by Crowder on Thursday.
In one clip, Varma acknowledged that it would have been a “real embarrassment” if he had been busted at the gatherings – despite advising the public of restrictions stating the opposite.
“We went to some, like, underground dance party … underneath a bank on Wall Street …,” he detailed in the video.
“We were all rolling, we’re all taking molly [MDMA] and everybody’s high,” Varma continued. “And I was so happy because I hadn’t done that in like a year and a half.”
He added: “But I was looking around being like, ‘F—, I wonder if anybody sees me, they’re gonna be pissed.’ Because this was not COVID-friendly.”
Varma said in the footage: “The only way I could do this job for the city was if I had some way to blow off steam every now and then.”
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Varma also boasted about his job and the power he appeared to wield over the city.
“I did all this deviant, like, sexual stuff while I was like, you know, like on TV and stuff,” he said in another recording. “People were like, ‘Aren’t you afraid? Aren’t you embarrassed?’ and I was like, ‘No, actually, I’m like, I love being my authentic self.’”
Varma said in a statement, “I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time.”
But the former official also blasted the recordings, saying he was “targeted by an operative for an extremist right-wing organization determined to malign public health officials and take down the public health system in America,” noting the “private conversations” were “secretly recorded, spliced, diced, and taken out of context.”
In the statement, Varma maintained the advice he doled out at the time worked.
“Facing the greatest public health crisis in a century, our top priority was to save lives, and every decision made was based on the best available science to keep New Yorkers safe,” he said.
“I stand by my efforts to get New Yorkers vaccinated against COVID-19, and I reject dangerous extremist efforts to undermine the public’s confidence in the need for and effectiveness of vaccines.”