As New Yorkers were being told to stay home and practice social distancing, the official in charge of New York City’s response to the Covid pandemic was not following his own advice. 

On Thursday, conservative commentator Steven Crowder posted a video montage on X of a senior public health adviser to Mayor de Blasio, Dr. Jay K. Varma, from April 2020 to May 2021, discussing his escapades during the pandemic. 

In a statement on Thursday, Dr. Varma admitted the video’s content was authentic. He insisted his comments had been “spliced, diced and taken out of context.“ However, he did admit to attending three gatherings between August 2020 and June 2021. 

“I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time,” he added.

In the video shared by Mr. Crowder, the former public health official is seen admitting he attended sex and dance parties during the pandemic. In one video, dated August 14, 2024, he admits it “would have been a real embarrassment” if people found out what he was doing instead of following the city’s guidelines and restrictions.

“We went to some, like underground, like dancy party, like underneath a bank in Wall Street, and we are rolling, we were all taking molly, and everybody’s high. And I was so happy because I hadn’t done that in like a year and a half,” Dr. Varma said in one part of the montage. 

He noted he worried people would be “pissed” if he were caught at the party because it was “not Covid-friendly.” Still, he claimed that wild parties were the “only way” he could do the job because it was a way to “blow off steam every now and then.”

In a later part of the montage, Dr. Varma discussed a sex party he went to in a hotel in the summer of 2020 with about “eight to ten of us” when the pandemic restrictions were still in place and elaborated on how he enjoyed the idea of “bodies being close to each other,” and “just being like naked with friends.”

He explained that people could “technically gather” at the time of the party. However, he clarified that hotels did not “want any inside parties, but they weren’t going to enforce it.”

In another part of the video, Dr. Varma shares he was engaged in “deviant sexual stuff” at the same point in time he was on TV as part of his role in the city government to talk about the pandemic. 

The New York Times describes Dr. Varma as the “architect of the city’s vaccine policy” and someone who “regularly appeared” at Covid briefings to encourage mask-wearing and social distancing. 

A spokesman for Dr. Varma, Chris Vlasto, said the public health official attended a dance party after he left his job for the city in June 2021. However, he added Dr. Varma attended another sex party in November 2020. 

During the pandemic, several high-profile officials were caught breaking their Covid policies, such as Governor Newsom, who went to a birthday party at French Laundry restaurant in November 2020. That dinner violated his state’s guidance to limit gatherings to no more than three households and encouraged people to wear masks and practice social distancing.

Meanwhile, Governor Whitmer was caught dining with 12 other people in May 2021 in violation of her state’s Covid policies. 

The video of Dr. Varma discussing his violation of New York City’s policies has led local officials to complain of hypocrisy and push for an investigation into his actions. City Councilman Robert Holden called for a “serious investigation” of Dr. Varma’s comments.

“It’s alarming, especially with so many first responders, city workers, and everyday New Yorkers losing their jobs or being sheltered in to ‘slow the spread’ while this was happening,” Mr. Holden said in a statement. 

He also urged Mayor Adams to “immediately drop all appeals of lawsuits filed by city workers who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 mandates.”
While Dr. Varma did not deny the authenticity of the comments he made, he claimed in a statement that 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.”