Public-Health Officials Should Have Been Talking About Their S*x Parties the Whole Time | At least it would have shown that they're relatable. | The Atlantic

In conversations caught on hidden camera, New York City's former COVID czar said that he'd organized a pair of s*x parties in the second half of 2020, as New Yorkers coped with peak pandemic social isolation. "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," Jay Varma told an undercover reporter with whom he thought he was on a date. In a video compiled from several recordings taken this summer, the onetime senior public-health adviser to city hall describes the two events that took place in August and November of 2020. He also talked about his work promoting vaccination in the city by making it "very uncomfortable" for those who wanted to avoid the shots.

The end result may seem hypocritical, but it's also relatable. (Well, maybe not entirely relatable, but in principle.) "We know that transparency can increase public trust in public health and medical experts," Matt Motta, who studies vaccine hesitancy at the Boston University School of Public Health, told me. What if Varma had been forthright with the public from the start, even on the subject of his s*x parties? Perhaps he could have shown that he understood the need to get together with your friends as safely as you can, in whatever ways make you happy. Even now, his description of that moment strikes a chord. "It wasn't so much s*x," he told the woman who was trying to embarrass him. "It was just like, I need to get this energy out of me." So did the rest of us.

The author Kristen V. Brown

The clip of him talking about s*x parties underground, underneath a bank in Wall Street

This is “Dr. Jay Varma” @drjayvarma and he is gross AF. Deleting your account will not protect you. pic.twitter.com/wJu1txx1HL

— Jim Fannon 🇨🇦 (@jimfannon) September 20, 2024

Full video from Catfish Crowder