There actually is this idea! I used to work on HIV, and there was was a paper (maybe around 2013?) that tried the idea and basically found that even when they

There actually is this idea! I used to work on HIV, and there was was a paper (maybe around 2013?) that tried the idea and basically found that even when they did maximum reactivation there remained a huge pool of unactivated but replication-competent virus, so it was unlikely to be a fruitful avenue. Edit: Found the paper, yay zotero! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24243014/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24243014/. You can check out the figures, but to quote from the abstract: > T cell activation reverses latency, but <1% of proviruses are induced to release infectious virus after maximum in vitro activation. The noninduced proviruses are generally considered defective but have not been characterized. Analysis of 213 noninduced proviral clones from treated patients showed 88.3% with identifiable defects but 11.7% with intact genomes and normal long terminal repeat (LTR) function. and >The identification of replication-competent noninduced proviruses indicates that the size of the latent reservoir-and, hence, the barrier to cure-may be up to 60-fold greater than previously estimated. I'm out the game, so can't comment on whether there's more recent work or if researchers have found a way around it.