Violet Affleck, eldest child of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, is using her platform to raise awareness. The activist delivered an impassioned speech at the United Nations this week, where she spoke about COVID-19 and long COVID, the most persistent form of the virus. Affleck said that she has been affected by the latter and that such a condition can persist long after recovery, with symptoms ranging from shortness of breath to dizziness.
The 19-year-old, a student at Yale University, strongly criticized the return to a maskless existence, and said that those living with long COVID now cast aside by most of the world. “Leaders tell us that we are the future,” a mask-wearing Affleck began. “But when it comes to the current pandemic, our present is being stolen before our eyes.” She lambasted some leaders for “ignoring, minimizing, and hiding both the prevalence of airborne transmission and the threat of the long COVID.” Affleck continued her remarks by providing information on the virus behind COVID-19, emphasizing the risks to those affected should other people carry it.
It was a heartfelt appeal, during which Affleck said she was “terrified,” especially for children who, in her words, “will not know a world without debilitating pain and exhaustion, who cannot trust their bodies to play, explore, and imagine” because of the contagion. “I’m furious for them,” she added. “It’s first-rate negligence to look children in the eye and say, ‘We know how to protect you, and we didn’t. We have access to technology to prevent airborne diseases, something that millions of our ancestors and millions of people around the world would kill for today, and we refuse to use it.’”
Affleck compared this fight for clean indoor air to another societal action born of a health crisis—the banning of smoking in public places. “We can recognize filtered air as a human right, as intuitively as we do filtered water,” she said. “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.”
This is not the first time Affleck has spoken out on such issues. In 2024, at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, she had hoped that good quality masks and testing would be free to the citizenry, reiterating her opposition to a ban on wearing masks. Affleck contracted a post-viral condition that offered her perspective on the long-term consequences of such a disease. More than five years later, Affleck has turned that experience into an opportunity to use her voice for those without a famous last name.
Originally published in Vanity Fair Italia
