Pardon my ignorance, but if an individual's HIV is 'active' (I'd be curious to know more about the definition of active in this case) does that mean that's the case across every cell of their body, or might some cells be active and others inactive?
Active means the virus is either attempting to infect a cell, or copying itself. When it's inactive it just sits in the cell doing nothing.
Some are active, some are not.
I believe it starts with lots of active viruses, then many go dormant, while others continue infecting. Then pretty much all of them go dormant, while slowly activating in small numbers over a long time (20 years even).
It's sort of a war of attrition, the virus kills immunity (T) cells slowly, over time. It's possible to prevent it from killing cells (which will then recover to normal levels), but the virus keeps hiding in other cells.
