Weeks into the start of the fall semester, Violet Affleck remains one of the busiest college students around. The 19-year-old daughter of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner appeared in front of the United Nations on Tuesday, where she gave a speech on the ongoing threat of long COVID — particularly for children.
Appearing as a youth advocate at an event focused on indoor air quality, Affleck criticized leaders for “ignoring, downplaying, and concealing” the risks of long COVID. Noting that the chronic illness is now more common among children under 5 than asthma, she said: “I shudder to think of where we’ll be in another five years of unmitigated infection and reinfection.” According to a recent article published in JAMA Pediatrics, long COVID — where symptoms last more than three months after an initial infection — affects between 10 and 20 percent of children who have had COVID.
Affleck — who is frequently photographed wearing an N95 mask — has previously said that she contracted a “post-viral condition” in 2019. This isn’t her first time speaking out about long COVID. Last year, she appeared at an L.A. city board meeting, where she criticized a proposed mask ban, describing long COVID as “a devastating neurological, cardiovascular illness that can take away people’s ability to work, move, see, or even think.” And after enrolling at Yale last year, she published an article in the Yale Global Health Review in May calling out leaders for allowing disabled and chronically ill people to “fall by the wayside.”
In her speech on Tuesday, Affleck called for increased masking and clean-air infrastructure. “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,’” she said.
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