Violet Affleck, the daughter of actors Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, continued her calls for mask mandates Tuesday, delivering a speech at the United Nations at an event titled “Healthy Indoor Air: A Global Call to Action.”
The 19-year-old, who says she contracted a “post-viral condition” in 2019, has been an outspoken advocate for stronger public health protections.
Appearing before the U.N. wearing a mask and goggles, Violet said her address: “We are told by leaders across the board that we are the future. But when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes.”
She went on to criticize adults who played to the “relentless beat of back to normal, ignoring downplaying, and concealing both the prevalence of airborne transmission and the threat of long COVID.”
Violet, who is currently studying at Yale University, continued: “Young people lacked both real choice in the matter and information about what was being chosen for us.
“As Dr. Akiko Iwasaki says, at this point, the whole population is the control group, and after only five years, long COVID has surpassed asthma as the most common chronic illness in children in five years and under.”
She added that she was “terrified” for children who “will not know a world without debilitating pain and exhaustion, who cannot trust their bodies to play, explore, and imagine” after being infected by COVID-19.
“I am furious on their behalf,” she said. “It is a neglect of the highest order to look children in the eyes and say, ‘We knew how to protect you and we didn't do it.’ We have access to a technology to prevent airborne disease, something that millions of our ancestors and millions of people around the world today would kill for, and we refuse to use it.”
She concluded by declaring that filtered air is a “human right” and should be available as freely as filtered water.
“We can create clean air infrastructure that is so ubiquitous and so obviously necessary, tomorrow’s children don’t even know why we need it,” she said.
Last year, Violet stood before the LA County Board of Supervisors to ask them to “confront the long COVID crisis” by increasing coronavirus safety measures in hospitals, jails and detention centres.
“You must expand the availability of high-quality free tests and treatment, and most importantly the county must oppose mask bans for any reason. They do not keep us safer,” she told the governing body.
Garner and Affleck, who were married from 2005 to 2018, share three children: Violet, 16-year-old Seraphina and Samuel, 13.
