Yesterday I watched the Senate Appropriations Committee price range listening to for the Division of Well being and Human Providers, that includes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. To no person’s shock, as relayed by U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), who’s Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Secretary Kennedy “repeatedly lied, dodged . . . questions, and made quite a few completely unfounded allegations.” Senator Murray continues:
“RFK Jr. is a shameless liar and a harmful conspiracy theorist — he ought to have by no means been confirmed. As a lot as he lies and deflects, I am not going to cease holding him accountable for the actual hurt he’s inflicting on folks on this nation.”
Within the midst of so many lies and evasions about public well being coming from the federal authorities, it’s SO refreshing to come across the polar reverse from another person within the public highlight. I am referring to this sensible new article written by Violet Affleck —daughter of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner — and not too long ago revealed in The Yale World Well being Evaluation.
Within the article, entitled, “A Chronically Ailing Earth: COVID Organizing as a Mannequin Local weather Response in Los Angeles,” Affleck, who simply completed her freshman yr at Yale, connects our response to the continuing COVID pandemic (and to different infectious ailments just like the looming H5N1 pandemic) with our response to the continuing local weather disaster.
She begins the article by discussing how the “promised finish” to the pandemic centered extra on “public relations” than “public well being.” She writes that the notion that we might all simply return to regular and faux COVID was over was “predicated on scientists’ hope — since disproven — that vaccination would forestall an infection and transmission.”
She additionally calls out public well being officers for spreading misinformation that has facilitated unmitigated, ongoing waves of COVID which can be nonetheless killing hundreds weekly and leading to hundreds of thousands of individuals (and counting) creating Lengthy COVID. She cites one examine displaying {that a} quarter of younger, match Marines have been impacted by Lengthy COVID, and different research that discovered that at the very least ten % of COVID infections result in Lengthy COVID. She additionally explains the assorted manifestations of Lengthy COVID, citing examine after examine after examine.
Affleck spends a great deal of time within the article discussing myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), which is current in about half of Lengthy COVID instances. She explains that the “hallmark symptom” of ME is post-exertional malaise (PEM), which she describes as “a type of bodily overdraft price that hits when folks with ME expend power past the slim ‘power envelope’ obtainable to them.” Individuals with ME (pwME) should study, then, to tempo themselves — to fastidiously mete “out one’s restricted provide of power in hopes that the physique can put no matter stays towards enchancment.”
Drawing on the thought of “pacing,” Affleck urges us to look to mutual assist organizations for fashions of methods to deal with crises equivalent to local weather change and COVID. She states:
the local weather resilience our society must construct depends upon the talents and techniques of pacing that disabled and chronically in poor health folks have constructed to handle each their very own signs and the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.
She gives the terrific instance of Masks Bloc LA (MBLA), a “collective of disabled and COVID-responsive organizers in Los Angeles” who have been already ready, due to their ongoing COVID collective care, to ship hundreds of respirators as quickly because the LA wildfires started in early January 2025, properly earlier than the Metropolis of Los Angeles addressed the state of affairs. She explains:
MBLA’s leap into motion was a picture-perfect illustration of the fact that no disaster is contained: whereas the town authorities’s indifference to the continuing pandemic – our mayor floated a masks ban this summer season – hindered its response to a different airborne emergency, COVID organizers’ each day refusal to desert one another to the pandemic allowed MBLA to quickly develop their work as soon as the overall inhabitants was again in disaster mode.
Affleck argues that we will study the talents and inclinations of “centering incapacity justice” and “refusing eugenicist logics” from teams like Masks Bloc LA, who’re carrying on the legacy of different mutual assist organizations such because the Black Panthers and ACT UP.
This is not the primary time Violet Affleck has been a public instance of masking, and a vocal advocate for going through the cruel actuality that COVID and Lengthy COVID are nonetheless right here and nonetheless affecting hundreds of thousands, and for taking precautions to guard ourselves and our communities. In July 2024, in a speech in entrance of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, she said:
“To confront the Lengthy COVID disaster I demand masks availability, air filtration, and far-UVC gentle in authorities amenities, together with jails and detention facilities, and masks mandates in county medical amenities” . . .  “We should develop availability of high-quality, free exams and therapy, and most significantly, the county should oppose masks bans for any purpose. They don’t preserve us safer. They make the weak members of our neighborhood much less secure and make everybody much less capable of take part in Los Angeles collectively.”
I am positive her present, sensible, extremely well-written and well-cited article will not be the final time we hear from her. Thanks, Violet Affleck, for being a greater advocate for public well being than just about anybody at present in command of our public well being techniques.Â
The Yale World Well being Evaluation is described on its web site as “the premiere undergraduate-run publication at Yale College overlaying matters in well being.” The Evaluation options “authentic analysis, considerate commentary, and balanced reporting with a worldwide well being focus” with the purpose of bridging “scholarship and apply,” connecting “college students and college,” and bringing collectively “voices from throughout a spectrum of disciplines and sectors.” I encourage you to learn Violet Affleck’s full article right here — and to go assist your native masks bloc!
