New York City’s social distancing and vaccination policy architects were seen attending sex parties and dance parties with more than 200 people, urging New Yorkers to wear masks and avoid large gatherings, according to a new video.
In the edited version of Recorded Dr. Jay Varma, who served as a senior public health adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio from April 2020 to May 2021, talks with a woman posing as a date off-camera about Mayor de Blasio’s strong influence in policymaking, such as mandatory vaccination. In the edited video, Dr. Varma praises himself for the policy that prevented Brooklyn Nets player Kyrie Irving, who refused to get vaccinated, from playing basketball.
The recorded conversation was shared by conservative YouTube commentator Steven Crowder, who eventually confronted Varma in a video.
Varma told the woman off-camera that he and his wife hosted a sex party in a hotel room in August 2020, inviting eight to 10 people. At the time, indoor gatherings of up to 10 people were permitted in New York. Still, Varma said it would be “embarrassing” if it were leaked.
“I had to be a little sneaky,” Varma says in the video. “I was managing all of the COVID-19 response for the city.”
Varma did not dispute the authenticity of the recording but noted it had been edited and his words had been taken “out of context”.
“I have been targeted by operatives of far-right organizations determined to smear public health officials and undermine America’s public health system,” Varma said in a statement. “I remain steadfast in my efforts to get New Yorkers the COVID-19 vaccine and reject dangerous extremist attempts to undermine public confidence in the necessity and effectiveness of the vaccine.”
Even after leaving the New York City government, Varma has remained a vocal advocate of mask-wearing and mandatory vaccination. Opinion articles of The New York Times 2022.
“Like everyone else, health officials and medical workers like me hope for the epidemic to end,” Varma wrote, “but while everyone else seems to be moving on, we have to live in a parallel world where COVID-19 prevention and control remains our daily focus.”
New York City has implemented some of the strictest social distancing policies in the country regarding COVID-19, leading to thousands of businesses permanently closing and contributing to a mass exodus of tens of thousands of New Yorkers from the city.
Now that the audio tape has been circulated, Democratic City Councilman Robert Holden has called on Mayor Eric Adams to investigate Varma and drop the city’s appeal of a lawsuit filed by city employees who were fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
“He was the city’s public health expert during the city shutdown, but he was busy having sex parties,” Holden said in a statement from his office. “This is disturbing, especially at a time when so many emergency responders, city employees and ordinary New Yorkers are out of work.”
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Varma is just one more name to add to a long list of leaders who have called for strict social-distancing restrictions but not followed them themselves, including Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), who attended a dinner at the French Laundry in November 2020 during a statewide restaurant shutdown.
Varma currently serves as executive vice president and chief medical officer at pharmaceutical company SIGA Technologies.
