Violet Affleck, daughter of actors Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, pressed leaders to act on clean air and mask policies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic while speaking before the United Nations.
The 19-year-old Yale University student addressed the “Healthy Indoor Air: A Global Call to Action” event on Sept. 23, urging governments to recognize the risks of airborne transmission and the long-term effects of COVID-19.
“We are told by leaders across the board that we are the future,” Affleck said while wearing a mask. “But when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes.”
Affleck, who has previously shared her own experience with long COVID in 2019, said young people were excluded from decisions about pandemic policies and left without clear information as society pushed to return to “normal.”
“Young people lacked both real choice in the matter and information about what was being chosen for us,” she said.
Her comments included warnings about the potential generational impact of long COVID.
“I am terrified for the children who do not or soon will not know a world without debilitating pain and exhaustion,” she said. “Who cannot trust their bodies to play, explore and imagine and who will not know the potential of their own minds unfettered by the cognitive damage from a COVID-19 infection.”
Affleck urged governments to treat clean air systems as basic infrastructure, on par with access to clean water.
“My hope for this event and my belief in this community pressed on the belief that we can and we must do that again,” she said. “We can recognize filtered air as a human right, as intuitively as we do filtered water.”
The speech followed earlier advocacy efforts. In July 2024, Affleck spoke to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, demanding stronger protections in public facilities.
“To confront the long COVID crisis, I demand mask availability, air filtration and far-UVC lights in government facilities, including jails and detention centers and mask mandates in county medical facilities,” she said then.
Her latest remarks mark her highest-profile platform yet, placing youth voices at the center of global debates on pandemic recovery and public health measures.
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