Years ago, he was fired from his job as a drug and alcohol counselor for refusing to get vaccinated. Now, unvaccinated people from across the country were gathering at sports bars to meet others like them. One woman came from New Jersey and the other from Philadelphia. One group drove from Florida.
They were there to attend a mixer hosted by Unvaccinated, an anti-vaccination dating app that, according to its website, is “based on building health-conscious relationships.” It was the second stop on Unjected’s four-city “Summer of Love” tour aimed at single people who oppose the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We are still some of the most persecuted people in society,” Armstrong, who now owns a video production company and helped organize the event, tells WIRED. “People still express complete hatred towards us and our beliefs in natural health. This continues to encourage us to host these meetings.”
Reorientation around in-person events is a major trend to cure app fatigue among dating apps struggling for signs of new life. According to ticketing platform Eventbrite, IRL dating events are on the rise by 2025. Tinder announced as part of its rebrand this year that it is investing in member meet-ups. But singles in the anti-vax community say that for them, these events are about connecting with people—potential future partners—who believe, above all, in bodily autonomy.
Other platforms include the app Unjabbed, NoVax.Singles, Unjuiced.Date and a Reddit-style dating and community site called Unjabbed.net, whose members span the US and Europe. PureBlood.Dating, which operates like a social club, launched a street marketing campaign earlier this year, posting flyers around San Francisco to attract members, urging people to sign up for notifications on its website if they wanted to join a “community of unvaccinated singles to connect at real, in-person events.”
“It’s really a pro-freedom movement. It’s not just an anti-vaccination movement,” says Shelby Hosanna, the 32-year-old founder of Unvaccinated. “Whatever goes into your body and what you do with your body is 100 percent your choice.”
Unvaccinated was specifically designed for people against the Covid vaccine, but according to its site, it is against all vaccinations. Members operate on an honor system, although the app offers a premium tier – “Unvaccinated Verified” – where they certify their unvaccinated status by affidavit. In 2021, the same year it launched, Unjected was removed from the Apple App Store for violating COVID misinformation policies. The app was re-accepted into the App Store in 2024, in addition to being uploaded to Google Play, thanks to Hosanna’s “time in the world”. Donald Trump, who in the past promoted the myth that childhood vaccines were linked to autism, won re-election in November.
COVID and other vaccines have been proven safe through rigorous testing and years of research, and Robert F. Before Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine skeptic, took charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reflected those realities. According to the agency, the recommendations are updated as necessary by new scientific research and are also monitored by the Food and Drug Administration, which collaborates with government and non-government partners to guarantee vaccine safety.
With the Trump administration weakening vaccine policies and more Americans opting out of it, the US is seeing a rise in the incidence of diseases that had been largely eradicated. According to several recent reports, deadly diseases that many vaccines are known to prevent are on the rise again in the United States, including measles, whooping cough, tuberculosis, and various bacterial infections.
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