Like for example, the cold sore virus apparently stays with you for it’s whole life once you’re infected. But it has “active” phases where you actually have cold sores, and then it can go away and just lay dormant inside your body after, until it’s ready to do it again.
What’s the point of this dormant phase? How does the virus benefit from this? In my mind, it would make more sense if you always had cold sores once infected.
If we know the virus doesn’t leave and is just having a spa day when it doesn’t feel like doing it’s thing, how come we can’t get rid of it? If we know what the problem is, and where the problem is, why can’t we do anything about it?
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Herpes have evolved to thrive in both skin cells and in nerve cells. However they behave very differently in the different types of cells. In skin cells it reproduces rapidly creating cold sores and spread the virus to other hosts. However the immune system is quite strong in the skin, this is where most infections come inn to the body. And with a very active virus the immune system gets very active to force the herpes virus in the skin away.
However nerves are usually quite a bit away from most immune system cells. They tend to lie further away from blood vessels then other cells making it harder for random antibodies to get to the nerves. And the herpes virus behaves very differently in the nerve cells and only reproduce enough to stay alive. With this lower activity and greater distance from the blood vessels it takes longer for the immune system to react to it, and even then it may only affect a few infected nerve cells and other infected cells may be other places in the body. This means the herpes virus will survive in the body for a long time before lower immune system activity towards it makes it so a few viruses can reach skin cells and start a new outbreak of cold sores.
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