OAN Staff Blake Wolf
8:36 AM – Thursday, September 25, 2025
Violet Affleck, the daughter of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, presented the importance of mask mandates in preventing the surge of COVID-19 to the United Nations, over five years after the pandemic sent the world into lockdowns.
19-year-old Affleck spoke about the importance of mask mandates in the “ongoing pandemic,” while wearing a KN95 mask, despite the COVID-19 pandemic being over for several years.
“We are told by leaders across the board that we are the future,” she began. “But when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes.”
Affleck argued that the “adults” in power are “ignoring, downplaying, and concealing both the prevalence of airborne transmission and the threat of long-COVID manifested in a series of choices.”
“Young people lacked both real choice in the matter and information about what was being chosen for us,” Affleck continued, going on to argue that “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.”
Affleck added that she is “terrified” that children may catch and spread the virus in schools, and “will not know a world without debilitating pain and exhaustion, who cannot trust their bodies to play, explore, and imagine.”
“I am furious on their behalf. 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.’”
Despite Affleck’s advocacy, many reputable research groups have found that masks are not effective in curbing the spread of COVID-19, including an article in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health published in the National Library of Medicine titled “Do facemasks protect against COVID-19?” which found that “There is no good evidence that facemasks protect the public against infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.”
Nevertheless, Affleck pushed on while wearing her KN95 mask, stating: “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 continued, noting that she hopes “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.”
Affleck, a Yale University student and the oldest daughter of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, previously called for “mask mandates in county medical facilities,” free COVID-19 testing kits, and widespread mask availability during a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting last year.
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