Ex-NYC COVID czar details in secret recording how to use the media to spin stories about Mpox drug

New York City’s disgraced ex-Covid Czar Dr Jay Varma has been caught seemingly admitting that he used the media to “spin stories” about a Monkeypox drug manufactured by his former employer, SIGA Technologies Inc.The comments were revealed in a highly edited trailer for part two of a series of secretly recorded conversations with a so-called undercover operative from conservative podcaster Steven Crowder’s “Mug Club.”The edited clips of Varma, released Wednesday, were reportedly filmed on a hidden camera and were recorded between July 27 and Aug.14 in New York.

The Post has not reviewed the full, unedited recordings.In the latest video, Varma — who previously served as senior health adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and was tasked with running the Big Apple’s pandemic response — described the Food and Drug Administration approval process while discussing SIGA Technologies’ “tecovirimat,” or “TPOXX” drug.“That’s why spinning it in the media is helpful.We want the FDA to approve our drugs, specifically for Monkeypox, and right now it’s only considered experimental and they won’t approve it,” he said.In the US, TPOXX is not approved by the FDA for the treatment of Mpox but can be used to treat patients as part of a clinical trial known as the Study of Tecovirimat for Human Mpox Virus (STOMP), according to SIGA Technologies. The company’s website added that the STOMP trial is being conducted to evaluate the efficacy of TPOXX for the treatment of Mpox.Varma then griped in the video filmed on Aug 14 that his then-employer is “stuck with our drug” but people aren’t going to be “as confident in it because the data doesn’t look as strong as it should.”“Sometimes you do a study, and this f—ing… nothing works at all, or people get really sick from it,” he said in the covert recording. “The problem is, if you do another study, it’ll take a year or two to do it, because you have to get ethics approval, y...