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Disgraced NYC COVID Czar: 'I Shouldn't Have Been Shamed for My Pandemic Sex Parties'

Mia Cathell
Mia Cathell  |  January 10, 2025 8:00 AM

Remember the former New York City public health official who was caught bragging about attending orgies mid-pandemic?

Dr. Jay Varma, the city's disgraced ex-COVID czar, wrote a piece for The Daily Beast this week shamelessly doubling down on his drug-fueled debauchery. The article, titled "Why I Shouldn't Have Been Shamed for My Pandemic Sex Parties," portrays Varma as the victim of "a far-right honeytrap" who was "caught in the crosshairs of a far-right 'activist journalism' sting."

Last year, Varma openly admitted he didn't practice what he preached in a series of undercover recordings captured by conservative commentator Steven Crowder's camera crew. Varma served as senior health adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio at the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns. An architect of the city's pandemic policies, Varma was the top aide who convinced de Blasio to enforce a vaccine mandate. It turned out he sought to impose such restrictions all while flouting the draconian measures he insisted others follow.

"After a respected career in public health, I was branded a deviant and hypocrite," Varma laments today.

Now, almost four months after the salacious revelations, Varma is re-emerging to "correct the record."

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"I made serious errors in judgment for which I take responsibility," Varma said. "But not the ones I was accused of by a fallacious campaign to erode trust in the health experts who tried to protect people from dying from COVID."

Recounting the revelry in August 2020, Varma wrote about how he and his wife, who are in an open marriage, met up with eight other polyamorous partners—all members of a so-called "pod"—for "an intimate party."

"[L]ike an increasing number of New Yorkers, we had also practiced ethical non-monogamy for more than a decade," Varma explained.

On camera, Varma had detailed how the 10 of them rented a hotel room that summer for their sexploits when New Yorkers were told to stay home and social distance. "Everybody had a blast because everybody was like so pent up. Everybody was like stuck together," Varma was filmed saying. Sometimes it wasn't the "penetrative sex stuff" that titillated Varma. Just "bodies being close to each other" and "being naked with friends" were what excited him.

In the op-ed, Varma insisted that they took COVID-19 safety precautions prior to, during, and after the sex party to prevent potential spread of the disease. Everyone tested negative at least 48 hours before the bash, they verified that nobody experienced coronavirus symptoms at the time (and continued to track signs of infection for the following week), and no one in the group ended up contracting the illness, Varma noted.

Then, in early November of 2020, they participated in "a nearly identical gathering, with the same outcome."

In June 2021, "I went to a dance party," Varma wrote, downplaying an underground rave he attended beneath a bank on Wall Street. As Varma had described on Crowder's hidden camera, "We were all rolling. We're all taking molly [MDMA], and everybody's high. I was so happy because I hadn't done that in like a year and a half."

"But I was looking around being like, 'F**k, I wonder if anybody sees me, they're gonna be p*ssed.' Because this was not COVID-friendly," Varma added, according to the tell-all tapes. "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."

At this point, up to 250 people were permitted to gather indoors, per city policy, "and I was vaccinated," Varma argued in The Daily Beast article. By then, he had left his government post but remained a part-time City Hall consultant.

Flash forward to 2024, "I was thriving professionally, working in the private sector to develop treatments for pandemic-prone viruses," Varma continued. "But my personal life and mental health were disintegrating. After our children left for college, my wife and I struggled to adapt as empty nesters, and we separated. Long-obscured mental health issues rose to the surface. I began chaotically searching for relief."

So, during his downward spiral, Varma matched with a woman named "Eve" on the dating app Bumble. He wondered why she had shown such a keen investment in his coronavirus-related work, but Varma ate up the attention anyway, blabbing about all the dirty details of his sexcapades.

"I naively thought her avid, somewhat obsessive interest in my career was due to romantic interest. She peppered me with questions about my work on COVID, my current research, and my personal life," Varma reflected. "Over Aperol Spritzes, I played myself up as a health hero with a daredevil personal life. I talked about work I was doing at the time. Every single thing I said, she flattered. I lapped up the approval."

Little did he know, "Eve" was an undercover operative working for Crowder, who entered the set-up in Chris Hansen-esque fashion. As Varma bemoaned:

Then on our fourth date, Steven Crowder—a man I did not know but would soon come to learn much more about—approached our table, sat down, and opened a notebook containing a transcript of every conversation I had had with Eve. She had been using a fake identity and recording me with a hidden camera and microphone.

He interrogated me about my activities four years earlier. Stunned, I stumbled to defend myself. After seeing a tripod, camera, and microphone directed at me from ten feet away, I finally realized what was going on, and I abruptly left.

Three weeks later, Crowder released snippets of videos from my 'dates' interspersed with titillating claims that I had attended multiple, massive secret sex parties during the period when people were restricted to their homes and not permitted to gather. I was a hypocrite who suppressed others' freedom while flaunting rules I imposed on others, he claimed. He livestreamed with Alex Jones to spread his claims.

The crux of Crowder's case was Varma's on-camera confession: "I had to be kind of sneaky about it [...] because I was running the entire COVID response in the city."

Varma, again arguing that he followed the rules dictating how many people could congregate inside and the official guidance on reducing risk, said it was not the fear of being exposed as a hypocritical rule-breaker that triggered this sense of secrecy, but the debauched nature of his sexcapades. "I was trying to hide my unconventional marriage and sexual choices," he said of the "sneaky" aspect.

In one of Crowder's clips, Varma acknowledged, "It would have been a real embarrassment," if he had been busted. Another segment showed Varma saying he wasn't too concerned about the "sexual stuff" coming out even though the city official had often appeared alongside de Blasio in televised COVID-19 briefings.

"I did all this deviant, like sexual stuff while I was like, you know, like on TV and stuff. 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 told "Eve."

In the article, Varma went on to assert that no one would have batted an eye if he was watching a football game with friends or playing Monopoly instead of partaking in group sex. "I would not have felt a need to be 'sneaky'—and would not have ended up a viral news sensation four years later—if I had gathered with nine friends to watch sports or play board games," Varma said.

"I want to be clear that I did make serious errors in judgment," he caveated. "In conversations with someone I only recently met, I betrayed the trust of people close to me by sharing details of my personal life and of my work in government and the private sector. I spoke without empathy and thoughtful consideration of complex issues, reinforcing a stereotype that public health officials are indifferent to negative economic and social consequences of their policies. I profoundly regret how this carelessness harmed family, friends, and colleagues."

Varma then pointed to a timeline of New York's COVID-19 mandates. Cross-checked against his private activities, it "makes clear that [Crowder's] central claim, that I was a hypocrite who broke COVID gathering rules, is wrong," Varma said. "Crowder and other online political extremists pair deceptive practices with fallacious conclusions. It created a distorted narrative that major outlets spread, amplifying contempt for health experts and agencies."

"Crowder targeted me," Varma continued, "in a transparent effort to bash health experts and other 'elites' who he believes destroyed America with their efforts to prevent COVID deaths."

Varma suggested that the price of undermining the public's trust in health officials like him will be paid in human lives. The prospect of Americans not obeying orders in the future threatens our ability to survive outbreaks, he argued.

"I regret that I have now played a part in the erosion of trust," Varma concluded. "I hope that by an honest reckoning with my errors and a plain assertion of truth I can contribute a small piece toward its restoration."