As a crowd of 60 anti-vaxxers squeezed into the upstairs dining area of Jonathan’s Grille in Nashville on a recent Monday night, a moment of pride washed over Scott Armstrong.
Years ago, he had been let go from his job as a drug and alcohol counselor for refusing to get vaccinated. Now, unvaccinated people from all over the country were piling into the sports bar to meet others like them. There was a woman who flew in from New Jersey and another from Philadelphia. One group drove up from Florida.
They were there to attend a mixer hosted by Unjected, an anti-vaccination dating app that, according to its website, is “built on creating health-conscious relationships.” It was the second stop on Unjected’s four-city “Summer of Love” tour meant for singles who oppose the Covid-19 vaccine.
“We’re still some of the most persecuted people in society right now,” Armstrong, who now owns a video production company and helped organize the event, tells WIRED. “People still express this absolute hatred for us and for our beliefs in natural health. It just continues to encourage us to host these meetups.”
The reorientation around in-person events to cure app fatigue is a major trend among dating apps struggling for signs of new life. According to ticketing platform Eventbrite, IRL dating events have been on the rise since 2025. Tinder, as part of its rebrand this year, announced it was investing in member meet-ups. But singles in the anti-vax community say for them the events are about connecting with people—potentially future partners—who, above all, believe in bodily autonomy.
Other platforms include the app Unjabbed, NoVax.Singles, Unjuiced.Date, and the Reddit-style dating and community site also named Unjabbed.net, whose members are spread across the US and Europe. PureBlood.Dating, which operates like a social club, launched earlier this year with a street marketing campaign, posting flyers around San Francisco to attract members that urged people to sign up for notifications on its website if they wanted to join a “community for unvaccinated singles to connect at real, in-person events.”
“This is really a pro-freedom movement. It’s not just an anti-vaccination movement,” says Shelby Hosana, the 32-year-old founder of Unjected. “Whatever goes in your body and whatever you do with your body is 100 percent your choice.”
Unjected was designed specifically for people against the Covid vaccine but, according to its site, it is against all vaccinations. Members operate on an honor system, though the app does offer a premium tier—“Unjected Verfied”—where they attest to 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 reaccepted into the App Store, in addition to being uploaded onto Google Play, in fall 2024, which Hosana attributes to “the timing in the world.” Donald Trump, who in the past promoted the myth that childhood vaccines were linked to autism, won reelection that November.
Covid and other vaccines have been proven safe through rigorous trials and years of research, and prior to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine skeptic, taking over the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reflected those realities. Recommendations, according to the agency, are updated when warranted 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, the US is seeing a rise in the incidence of diseases that were largely stamped out. According to multiple recent reports, fatal illnesses that many vaccines are known to protect against are again on the rise in the US, including measles, whooping cough, tuberculosis, and various bacterial infections.