Violet Affleck delivered an address at the United Nations this week!
The 19-year-old daughter of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, who is a freshman at Yale, gave a speech on Tuesday (September 23) in New York, speaking about the impacts that COVID-19 has had on children, and in favor of clean air and masking to prevent long COVID transmission.
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“We are told by leaders across the board that we are the future,” Violet said, while wearing a K95 mask, via People. “But when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes.”
She continued to criticize adults for “the relentless beat of back to normal, ignoring downplaying, and concealing both the prevalence of airborne transmission and the threat of long COVID.”
“Young people lacked both real choice in the matter and information about what was being chosen for us,” Violet added.
“Here’s what we know about SARS CoV2,” she shared. “It is airborne, floating and lingering in the air, 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 movement and places people who already have it in greater danger,” she continued. “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 five years and under.”
Violet also expressed her fears of COVID spreading in schools, noting she’s “terrified” for children “will not know a world without debilitating pain and exhaustion, who cannot trust their bodies to play, explore, and imagine” after being infected.
“I am furious on their behalf,” she shared. “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.”
“And I shudder to think of where we will be in another five years of unmitigated infection and reinfection,” she adds. “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.’”
“My hope for this event and my belief in this community pressed on the belief that we can and we must do that again,” Violet said. “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.”
Back in July 2024, Violet also spoke out about mask mandates at a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting.
Source: justjared.com