This week, Violet Affleck delivered a speech at the United Nations. Violet has become a youth advocate for mask-wearing and the perils of long Covid. This was not her first public speech about public mask mandates and public health, but her UN speech was probably her biggest audience. Violet is 19 years old and a student at Yale, having just started her sophomore year. Violet said, in part:

“Leaders tell us that we are the future. 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. 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.”

[From Vanity Fair]

This reminds me of a theory that’s been going around for a few years, that in America, something broke during the pandemic and never healed. Part of it was the public resistance to even basic public health precautions, but another part of it was the unwritten legacy of long Covid. Speaking of, Meghan McCain decided to put her two cents in:

Meghan McCain unleashed a tirade against Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s ‘nepo baby’ daughter – following the teenager’s mask mandate speech at a United Nations event. The 19-year-old activist spoke about the importance of masks and other preventative devices, more than five years after the Covid-19 pandemic at the Healthy Indoor Air: A Global Call to Action event this week.

Former The View cohost and conservative political commentator McCain, 40, who is herself the nepo baby daughter of late senator John McCain, took to X in a now-deleted post on Wednesday, branding Violet’s remarks ‘absurd.’ She wrote: ‘Every single thing about all of this is why people hate nepo babies so much. She has no business speaking at the UN and what she is speaking about is patently absurd.’

While the original post was swiftly deleted by McCain, she later hit back at critics calling her a hypocrite for branding Violet a nepo baby – before labelling the teenager ‘insane’ for her remarks.

She wrote: ‘First, it takes one to know one. I’m clearly a nepo baby, check my twitter bio. Say whatever you want about me, my parents would have NEVER been okay with me speaking in front of the United Nations at 19 about a health issue I had no background, training or experience in. Having famous parents is a double edged sword and if you’re going to put yourself out there, you gotta take the heat (as I have always done) Finally – anyone advocating that I mask my kids all day in 2025 I think is insane, and that is my right. Have a nice day. ‘

[From The Daily Mail]

Violet wasn’t invited to speak on Ukrainian military strategy at the UN General Assembly, she spoke at one of the many side-sessions which happened alongside the UNGA opening week. The side-conference was literally “Healthy Indoor Air: A Global Call to Action.” The UN also has a history of inviting young activists to speak and attend sessions. Basically, Violet had every reason to be there and her speech was great and necessary. Meghan McCain is a hypocrite troll who needs to get a f–king job.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red.