But this group of scientists — who did not reply to Yahoo Life’s request for comment — are decidedly in the minority. Schaffner, a 50-year-plus veteran of epidemiology, says taking their approach to herd immunity would be playing with fire. “If we leave it to the virus itself, we have to recognize that in many parts of the United States at present, less than 5 percent of people have been infected,” he says. “That means the virus would have to infect a vastly larger number of people to actually achieve herd immunity — at the price of huge amounts of social disruption, sickness, hospitalizations and, obviously, deaths.”