system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How is a virus like chicken pox able to remain dormant in your body and manifest itself again later in life as Shingles (sometimes even decades later)?

I apologise if my understanding is incorrect, but I've watched a few videos on the Immune system and the really basic takeaway I got on how it works is something like:

Virus detected > Immune system battles virus > Recovery

From my understanding there is also something involving Memory cells and Helper T cells to help protect you against the same virus/bacteria once you've recovered. So why then is something like Chicken pox simply able to recede into our nerves and not be bothered by our Immune system instead of being fully eradicated in the first place?
gpt
The chicken pox virus can also infect peripheral nerve cells.
The immune system can only react to things that are "visible" to it, that means structures that are on the surface of cells, released by damaged cells or present in the the blood, or intercellular fliluid. It recognises "foreign" structures and has "brakes" against reacting to "self" structures.

An inactive virus does not ( or barely) replicate, that means that there are no "virus" structures visible to immune cells. Nerve cells are "good" hiding places as they are long lived.