What’s more romantic than medical history?
When Unjected hosted in-person meetups across four cities this spring, it caused controversy.
By Grey Battle
Genna Betros, 27, was scrolling through Instagram four years ago when she came across Unjected, a dating app for people who chose not to receive the covid-19 vaccine. Betros had made the same decision. She was wary of how quickly the vaccine was developed, she says, and distrusting of its government support.
She grew up in a vegetarian, politically independent household in New Jersey. A headache would be treated with peppermint oil before Advil. Her view of the American medical system boils down to, as she puts it, “You can’t trust the doctor anymore.” She believes that some doctors are beholden to the pharmaceutical industry.
She had profiles on Hinge and Bumble, but Unjected attracted someone she described as highly questioning who wanted to “stay strong for their family and not submit to whatever the TV says,” she explains.
On Unjected, she matched with Corey Deemer. Betros took two weeks to message Deemer back. When she did, she realized they were only an hour-long drive apart. They met at a bar between Philadelphia and New Jersey. Deemer had a few drinks before Betros arrived. He recalled worrying she might not be real.
“But she showed up, and she lit up the room. We sat there and talked, played every board game there,” says Deemer, a 28-year-old apprentice electrical lineman. Like Betros, Deemer was concerned by the “aggressive” push for Americans to receive covid vaccines.
Unjected describes itself as a platform to connect “those who share like-minded values and the convictions to remain unvaccinated.” The app began operations in 2021.
The introduction of the covid-19 vaccine in late 2020 saved millions of lives. It also galvanized vaccine skeptics, who have grown emboldened by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push to revamp U.S. vaccine policy, including a new charter for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee.
Dropping vaccination rates have caused some infectious diseases to roar back, putting infants, the elderly and immunocompromised people at particular risk, per public health experts. Data reported by the CDC shows that non-medical exemptions for childhood vaccines have reached an all-time high. At the same time, CDC reports show whooping cough and other vaccine-preventable diseases rising — and in the case of measles, growing to outbreaks not seen in decades.
And so when Unjected hosted in-person meetups across four cities this spring, it sparked anger online. (“Anti-vaxxers get a chance to fall in love with others who do not understand science,” read the headline of a Denver Post opinion column.)
Scott Armstrong, who has handled everything from content production to customer service as operations director at Unjected, said he thinks that many anti-vaxxers are often pigeonholed for being part of the Make America Great Again movement. “Who invented the vaccine? Donald Trump,” he says. “There’s no love for Trump around here at all,”he adds, referring to the Unjected community. “Complete opposite, in fact.”
According to Unjected, the bulk of its 65,000 active users are ages 25 to 45.Many identify as politically independent, spiritual, vegetarian or vegan, according to Armstrong, who adds thatits largest user bases are in cities that had some of the strictest pandemic lockdowns — Portland, Denver, Toronto and Phoenix. California has the highest concentration of users; Alabama has none.
While Armstrong, 42, doesn’t need his friends to be unvaccinated, it is a requirement for his long-term partner. “I sacrificed a lot to remain unvaccinated. It was not an easy choice. I lost a job. I lost all my friends,” he explains, referring to his decision to decline the covid-19 shot.
He says he remained steadfast because of his concerns that some employers were mandating the vaccine, especially given what he calls its accelerated development.
The covid vaccine was able to be developed in 11 months because it was based on research spanning decades, scientists told The Washington Post in December 2020. The study of messenger RNA, along with ways to encapsulate and transport large molecules, had begun in the 1960s.
Armstrong said he “wanted a partner who also had that level of resilience, who was willing to endure what it took to remain unvaccinated,” he said. “To me, that’s somebody I would want to be the mother of my kids.”
Unjected’s users are competing for a relatively small pool of potential partners. According to national surveys, roughly 1 in 5 U.S. adults had still not gotten the covid-19 vaccine a year after it was rolled out. And yet Unjected is one of several dating sites that sprung up in the wake of the pandemic catering to unvaccinated singles, including Unjabbed.net, Unjuiced.date, NoVax.singles and PureBlood.dating. All of these apps are still operational and targeted at people who chose not to receive the covid-19 vaccine (many users say they received some vaccinations during childhood).
Setting up a profile on a dating sitefor those who didn’t get the covid vaccine is similar to that of mainstream ones. A user can choose to share information about theirsexuality, gender orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, education, profession and what kind of relationship they are looking for. They can also add lifestyle preferences (smoking, drinking, pets, children). Some apps are even more detailed, allowing users to answer questions about their height, weight, zodiac sign and political affiliation.
Unjabbed.net hosts forums where users express frustrations with conventional dating sites, including how phrases such as “no anti-vaxxers” and “no conspiracy theorists” can be found at the bottom of profiles on those apps.
A common concernvoiced by users on Unjabbed, Unjected and other such sites is the belief, unfounded in science, that vaccinated people can pass covid toxins to unvaccinated people through physical contact. According to the CDC, there is no evidence of this occurring. Users often reference “vaccine shedding,” a term for when a vaccine can briefly release virus from a vaccinated person’s body. Because the covid-19 vaccines used in the United States don’t contain live virus, people who are vaccinated cannot shed.
Unjected’s founder, 32-year-old Shelby Hosana, has long been suspicious of vaccines. At 13, she received the Gardasil vaccine to prevent human papillomavirus (HPV).She believes the vaccine caused her heart conditions, including tachycardia, that appeared soon after. “I was completely debilitated after having this vaccine,” she explains. “I became a prisoner of war to the pharmaceutical industry.”
Researchers have studied the Gardasil and Gardasil 9 vaccines extensively and found them to be safe; both are more than 95 percent effective in preventing precursors to cervical cancer caused by HPV.
Hosana now has three children of her own. They all have religious exemptions to be unvaccinated at school and community events.
She came up with the idea for Unjected after talking to her godmother, who’d been swiping through Tinder profiles:One man had an image of himself with a mask on; another had written that any of his matches must be vaccinated.
Hosana calls herself a “peaceful anarchist” and describes Unjected as a “divine mission.” She saysthe app’s user base is creeping back up to the 100,000 members it once had, before Apple removed Unjected from its App Store in July 2021, a ban that lasted until December of that year.Google Play had flagged social posts by users that promoted false claims that vaccines modify genes, connect to 5G and serve as bioweapons, per a Bloomberg report. After being contacted by Bloomberg, Apple decided Unjected had run afoul of its rules around covid content. Apple later reinstated Unjected after it added a content moderation system where users could flag posts to be taken down.
When Unjected planned to host an in-person event in Denver on May 29, Hosana fielded thousands of hate messages and threats that were reviewed by The Post.
The proposed venue, Recess Beer Garden, canceled before the date, telling Hosana in an email, “We cannot knowingly allow an event to move forward that has generated this level of risk and hostility.” Unjected eventually moved its event to a larger venue with security. About 175 people attended — a “really good turnout,” Hosana says.
She and paralegal Mike Yellen filed a pro se lawsuit against Recess under the Americans With Disabilities Act. Recess did not respond to The Post’s request for comment. Yellen said hehopes the case will result in a new legal standard in which unvaccinated people would be treated as a protected class.
Doron Dorfman, an expert on disability law who teaches at Seton Hall, calls the lawsuit “ridiculous.” Even if a judge were to agree that being unvaccinated is a kind of disability, and that the decision by Recess was discriminatory, Recess can argue that Unjected’s event created a public hazard in which other people could become sick, Dorfman says.
“People who are anti-vaxxers put people with actual disabilities, people who are immunocompromised, in danger,” Dorfman says. “It’s a cruel irony to try to use a protection given to people with disabilities.”
Meanwhile, after hitting it off on their first date, Betros and Deemer continued seeing each other on the weekends. They eventually moved in together, got engaged and married in 2024.
The two began renting a larger house after Genna, who took her husband’s last name, learned she was pregnant. They stocked the new home with alternative cleaning products, glass dishes and organic foods. Genna gave birth to their son last year and is now a stay-at-home mom.
“I consider our family very pure,” Genna says.She declined to say whether the couple had plans to vaccinate their child.