system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What causes shingles (and the zoster virus in general) to manifest as a rash?

Shingles is a reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus. In searching online, I haven’t been able to find out what triggers the virus to exhibit a painful rash with blisters. Why is it a rash instead of, say, a sore throat?
gpt
The virus first causes chicken pox then when that disease subsides the virus crawls along your nerves and finally hides inside the ganglia (that is the bodies of the neurons your nerves are attached to) and replicates just barely to survive there for a long time.

these are the same ganglia that correspond to that specific patch of skin the virus came from.

Fast forward like ten years, and your immune system falters for whatever reason and the virus, still hidden in the ganglia, takes the chance to replicate more vigorously and crawls once again along the nerves in the opposite direction to reach the same corresponding patches of skin.