You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

This pandemic has upended our world.

It's cost millions of people their jobs, close schools, taken a lot of lives.

It's had such a huge effect in such a short period of time.

So it's understandable that many people comfort themselves by thinking this will pass.

Sooner or later, this virus will just go away.

Like everyone wants to weigh out psychologically, right?

Because no one's ever coped with something of the scale.

And it's not like a crisis like a hurricane or 9-11 where it's like time bound or do you

graphically bound?

This is like everyone everywhere for indefinitely right now.

It feels to people, right?

That's Debbie Schreeder, a global health expert at the University of Edinburgh Medical School.

And there is a theoretical way this could end.

If enough people catch coronavirus and then become immune, the virus doesn't have anywhere

to go and it starts to kind of burn itself out.

Soon even the people who haven't caught it are safe.

This idea called natural herd immunity has really caught on in some circles.

The rampant belief that we should relax and facilitate herd immunity.

Herd immunity.

In theory, building immunity to help slow it even further.

But as good as herd immunity might look on paper, the real world is turning out to be

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