The daughter of Hollywood bigwigs Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner delivered a speech to the United Nations about the importance of mask mandates in preventing the surge of COVID-19 — five years after the disease shut down the world.
Violet Affleck, 19, made her emotional plea while wearing a KN95 mask as part of the “Healthy Indoor Air: A Global Call to Action” at the UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday.
The Yale University freshman, who contracted a post-viral condition in 2019, lectured world leaders about how the world is ignoring the “ongoing pandemic” and warned that the population has dropped mask mandates too quickly.
“We are told by leaders across the board that we are the future,” Violet said. “But, when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes.”
Violet criticized the “adults” for their “relentless beat of ‘back to normal,’” claiming that they’re “ignoring, downplaying, and concealing both the prevalence of airborne transmission and the threat of Long Covid manifested in a series of choices.”
“Young people lacked both real choice in the matter and information about what was being chosen for us,” she added.
Violet told the world leaders that evidence shows SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted through the air and can persist in indoor environments, and that “one infection can result in disabling damage to almost every cell in the body from the brain and heart to the nerves and blood vessels.”
“Every subsequent infection increases the risk of long COVID and places people who already have it in greater danger,” the 19-year-old stated.
Violet cited Yale professor Dr. Akiko Iwasaki in saying that the “whole population in the control group, and after only five years, long COVID surpassed asthma as the most common chronic illness in children in five years or younger.”
She shared she was “terrified” that children might spread the virus in schools and “will not know a world without debilitating pain and exhaustion, who cannot trust their bodies to play, explore, and imagine.”
“I am furious on their behalf. 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,’” the teen said.
“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.”
“And I shudder to think of where we will be in another five years of unmitigated infection and reinfection,” she warned, shifting her focus to a different health fight — the push to outlaw smoking in public.
“Many of you fought the long and hard battle against indoor smoking. My only memory of that era at almost 20 years old is being confused as a child about the no-smoking signs on planes. ‘Who would do that? That’s gross,’” she said.
Violet said her “hope” is that “we can recognize filtered air as a human right, as intuitively as we do filtered water.”
“We can create clean air infrastructure that is so ubiquitous and so obviously necessary, so that tomorrow’s children don’t even know why we need it,” she added.
Violet has been an outspoken voice for mask mandates since she shared last year that she contracted a post-viral condition.
Violet demanded mask mandates in LA hospitals and advocated for public officials to invest resources in Personal Protective Equipment ahead of a potential future pandemic during a city board meeting in Los Angeles.
A post-viral condition — also known as “long COVID” — occurs following a viral infection, with symptoms that can last for months and often include fatigue, lethargy, memory loss, difficulty concentrating, and exhaustion, according to the Mayo Clinic.
She has also written for the Yale Global Health Review, covering her home city’s coordinated response to COVID-19 and issues related to climate change.
Violet is the oldest daughter of Affleck and Garner, who divorced in 2015 after 10 years of marriage and are also parents to Seraphina, 15, and Samuel, 12.
Read the full article here
