Opinion: Why I Shouldn’t Have Been Shamed for My Pandemic Sex Parties

One day in October 2024, the New York Post’s digital billboard in Times Square featured the three most prominent people in that day’s news: Vice President Kamala Harris, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and Dr. Jay Varma. Me.

Why my sudden fame? Because I had been caught in the crosshairs of a far-right “activist journalism” sting. After a respected career in public health, I was branded a deviant and hypocrite. There were hundreds of stories. The New York Times headline read “Former N.Y.C. Covid Czar Partied While Preaching Social Distancing.”

I’m writing today to correct the record. I made serious errors in judgment for which I take responsibility.

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.

To see how I got on that billboard, let’s rewind the clock to March 2020.

As the first COVID-19 infections were diagnosed in New York City, I was at the Africa Centers for Disease Control in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia after a career at the CDC working in Atlanta, Bangkok, Beijing, and New York City to prevent infectious diseases and stop deadly outbreaks.

On March 11, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, and New York City officials asked for my help. A few days later, Governor Andrew Cuomo closed New York’s businesses and banned private gatherings of any size for any reason. On April 3, as thousands of New Yorkers were hospitalized or dying from COVID-19, I departed Addis Ababa with four suitcases, two cats, and a handful of medical masks, landed in New York, and got to work.

For the next two months, I worked non-stop as an aide to Mayor Bill de Blasio, working with government and private sector teams to build one of the country’s largest testing and tracing programs, so businesses could re-open and people could gather safely.

We launched it at the end of May. A few days later, Gov. Cuomo allowed New York City businesses to reopen and private indoor gatherings for up to 10 people. On July 20, with hospitalizations and deaths at the lowest levels since March, he increased the limit to 50 people. In daily press conferences with the mayor, I told people they could gather safely if they kept within the limit and, if possible, tested everyone before and monitored symptoms on the day of the event and the week after.

While I worked on this vital effort, I did not share anything with my colleagues or the public about my private life. Outwardly, that life is conventional. My wife and I have been married for 26 years and have three grown children. But–like an increasing number of New Yorkers–we had also practiced ethical non-monogamy for more than a decade.

In August 2020, we gathered with eight other close friends—all members of our “pod”—for an intimate party. We all had negative PCR tests 48 hours before gathering. We verified that we had no COVID symptoms at the time we gathered and tracked each other’s symptoms for the following week. No one in the group contracted COVID. In early November, we participated in a nearly identical gathering, with the same outcome.

In May 2021, I left government but remained a part-time consultant to City Hall. That June, I went to a dance party. By then, up to 250 people were allowed to gather indoors, and I was vaccinated, as were the majority of adult New Yorkers.

Three years later, in 2024, I was thriving professionally, working in the private sector to develop treatments for pandemic-prone viruses. 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.

I matched with Eve on Bumble, the dating app. We met three times for drinks in July and August 2024. 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. 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.

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 his case was my confession in the videos that “I had to be kind of sneaky about it”—meaning the intimate gathering in August—and that people would be upset if they found out. I was following the rules on how many people could gather and the public guidance on how to reduce risk, but I was trying to hide my unconventional marriage and sexual choices.

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.

I want to be clear that I did make serious errors in judgment. 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.

But I was shocked that major outlets simply accepted Crowder’s version. A simple timeline that plots New York’s COVID-19 rules against my private activities and public statements makes clear that his central claim, that I was a hypocrite who broke COVID gathering rules, is wrong. 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, I learned, had been replicating tactics pioneered by James O’Keefe and Project Veritas. I wasn’t his only target.

Last summer he had recruited women to find men on dating apps in New York City to record potentially embarrassing information that would advance right-wing messages before the upcoming election. Crowder and O’Keefe refer to this honeytrap espionage tactic as “journalism.” Crowder targeted me in a transparent effort to bash health experts and other “elites” who he believes destroyed America with their efforts to prevent COVID deaths. Others were targeted for their work at the United Nations, the Justice Department, and in the media.

While my situation is exceptional, it is also a story about an erosion of trust in America that threatens our ability to survive crises. In my field, outbreaks and pandemics end when people act together to change behavior, support others in their community, and get treated or vaccinated.

This collective action depends on high levels of trust in each other (“if I do the right thing, my neighbor will as well”) and in institutions (“they have our best interest in mind and are giving us the best guidance possible”). During the first two years of COVID-19, these factors correlated closely with lower community death rates.

If we lose this trust, how will people react if bird flu (H5N1 influenza) begins spreading through the food supply or person-to-person? Will people even believe there is an outbreak? Will they agree to stay home when sick, avoid contaminated products, and get vaccinated? A bird flu pandemic originating on American soil could lead countries to ban American travelers, foods, and other products, causing even more economic damage than COVID or the Great Recession did.

I regret that I have now played a part in the erosion of trust. 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.