Public health experts say it will take true herd immunity before people can go back to their lives as they knew them before the coronavirus pandemic; herd immunity to a disease is reached when enough people in a community have either been infected with the virus or vaccinated against it, developing protections that prevent the disease from gaining a foothold and spreading through the population. Think measles, and polio.
But the jury is still out on when herd immunity might be achieved. Rutgers University professor of medicine and infectious disease Dr. Martin Blaser says the answer to whether it is achievable depends on a lot of variables.