Originally appeared on E! Online
Violet Affleck is bringing her advocacy to the mainstage.
The eldest daughter of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck delivered a passionate speech to the members of the United Nations about the importance of mask mandates and clean air initiatives after the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We are told by leaders across the board that we are the future,” the 19-year-old, wearing a mask, shared at the Healthy Indoor Air: A Global Call to Action event on Sept. 23. “But when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes.”
The Yale University student — who contracted and healed from long Covid in 2019 — argued that in an effort for society to return “back to normal,” adults have been “ignoring, downplaying and concealing both the prevalence of airborne transmission and the threat of long Covid.”
READ Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck’s Daughter Violet Affleck Speaks Out About Health in Rare Speech
She added, “Young people lacked both real choice in the matter and information about what was being chosen for us.”
She shared research into SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the respiratory disease, and how it may impact future generations.
“I am terrified for the children who do not or soon will not know a world without debilitating pain and exhaustion,” Affleck 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.”
The teen concluded her message with a call to action: focus on creating clean air infrastructure.
“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 explained. “We can recognize filtered air as a human right, as intuitively as we do filtered water.”
This isn’t the first time Affleck has spoken out about health. In July 2024, she presented to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, where she discussed her medical journey and made a plea for action.
“To confront the long COVID crisis,” Affleck said at the time, “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.”
Violet Affleck has penned an essay about public health. On May 18, the eldest child of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner published a piece in The Yale Global Health Review titled, “A Chronically Ill Earth: COVID Organizing as a Model Climate Response in Los Angeles.” In her paper, the 19-year-old, who is a freshman at Yale University, compared the COVID pandemic response to that of the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year and recalled getting into an argument with her mom as parts of the city burned.
