New York City's former COVID czar has been caught being a huge hypocrite.
Jay Varma, who was the city's senior public health adviser between 2020 and 2021 and led its COVID-19 response, has admitted to not following the very social distancing protocols he gave to his fellow New Yorkers, The New York Times reports.
While in charge, Varma advised residents to do what most responsible health officials would recommend: stay at home, stay away from others, mask in public, and don't attend large gatherings.
But newly surfaced video footage shows Varma bragging about attending several parties — and some of them sound pretty steamy! — while the pandemic was still raging on. It doesn't get much more red-handed than that, folks.
The heavily-edited video, a supercut made from secret recordings taken during various restaurant conversations, was posted by a conservative podcaster — and anti-woke crusader — Steven Crowder on Thursday.
The comments, however, are damning regardless of how they were edited. Varma boasts that he attended a drug-fueled "underground dance party" underneath a Wall Street bank with more than 200 people. He also said he hosted a sex party with his wife in a hotel with eight to ten others, which he described as "just being naked with friends."
"I had to be kind of sneaky about it," Varma said in the video. "I was running the entire COVID response for the city."
"This was not COVID friendly," he said at another point.
Varma also claims he was the one who convinced Mayor Bill de Blasio to institute a vaccine mandate, which required proof of vaccination for participating in indoor activities. The mandate made Varma a national figure at the time; it controversially prevented basketball star Kyrie Irving from playing for the Brooklyn Nets during a pivotal point in the season.
Following the video's release, Varma fessed up to attending those parties, but contends the depicted conversations were "spliced, diced, and taken out of context."
"I served in City Hall between April 2020 - May 2021. During that time, I participated in two private gatherings," Varma said in a statement. "I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time."
A spokesperson for Varma told CBS News that there were actually two sex parties — one in August 2020, and the other in November — both of which he attended while acting as COVID czar. The Wall Street party, however, was in June 2021, shortly after Varma had left his role. (Not that it makes it any less hypocritical.)
In his defense, Varma argues that he's being smeared by extremists.
"Unfortunately, I 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," he said in the statement, per CBS. "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."
That the ulterior motive for outing Varma's hyopcrisy is to sow distrust in health officials is probably true — Crowder, who released the video, is a vaccine conspiracy theorist and a COVID denier. But apparently even a broken clock — or total crank — is right occasionally.
More on COVID: New Study Finds Wegovy Reduces COVID Death Risk By 33 Percent
Share This Article