"The official in charge of New York City’s pandemic response participated in sex parties and attended a dance party underneath a Wall Street bank during the height of the pandemic..."

"... even as he was instructing New Yorkers to stay home and away from others to stop the spread of Covid-19. He acknowledged his transgressions on Thursday after being caught on hidden camera boasting about his exploits."

Reports the NYT, in "Former N.Y.C. Covid Czar Partied While Preaching Social Distancing/In a hidden-camera video posted by a conservative podcaster, Dr. Jay K. Varma boasts about flouting the public health guidelines he insisted others follow."

"The video appears to have been compiled from several recordings, in which Dr. Varma is seen at a number of restaurants and cafes, chatting with a woman who remains off camera. At various points, he describes a sex party he and his wife held in a hotel and a dance party he attended in a space under a bank on Wall Street, joined by more than 200 people. In a statement, Dr. Varma did not dispute the recordings’ authenticity but said they had been 'spliced, diced and taken out of context.'"

Here's the video:

"Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don’t violate our policies, they’ll remain on our site."

"As an open platform, it’s crucial for us to allow everyone–from creators to journalists to late-night TV hosts–to express their opinions w/in the scope of our policies."

Tweeted YouTube, quoted in "YouTube is refusing to punish a star with millions of fans after he hurled homophobic slurs at a journalist" (Business Insider).

Thanks to YouTube for taking the strong free-speech position. Let us hear and decide for ourselves what we think of insults. Don't overprotect us, or we will become children.

ADDED: I was running off as I wrote this post, so I didn't get to 2 topics that commenters are talking about:

1. YouTube doesn't just allow people on and kick people off; it also monetizes and demonetizes. Different considerations arise, and I understand advertisers not wanting their product juxtaposed with, say, homophobic slurs. I used to work in an ad agency in the 1970s, and I remember putting it in the contract that an ad for an airline wouldn't run next to a story about an airplane crash. Placement of ads matters, and YouTube is selling ad space and needs to be able to present advertisers with places where they want their ads, not just flow money to video providers based on the size of the audience. Nasty speech can grab a lot of eyeballs. There need not be an automatic cash reward for that.

2. The use of the word I've been talking about for 2 days — here and here — "deeply." I think "deeply offensive" is the worst of the deeply phrases. And frankly, I don't think the purported deep offense here and elsewhere is that deep. In fact I think it's damned shallow. Deeply shallow.