What is the typical progression of HIV to AIDS?

What is the typical progression of HIV to AIDS?

You can define, scientifically, a viremic period of acute infection, generally fever, chills, sweats etc. Sometimes an opportunistic infection if it's bad, so it looks like lay dates. Then you do a CD4 count and you find, "Hey, it's 700 he's still reasonably OK ... the CD4 may have dropped some but then his immune system comes over and goes back up." Because it actually does dip and come back up, it dips a little. And then you go into this lull where the virus is bouncing around and the person feels fine. Then all of a sudden T-cells are dropping significantly, an unlucky person may have more in the brain than not. An unlucky person-- who is not treated now, no treatment, we don't know, he doesn't know he's infected-- he may get a tumor before he should have which will bring him to a doctor's office. Or in the area of no therapy it's just going to wait until some infection occurs and the guy goes to the doctor and says, "I've been getting a lot of strange infections." That's coming in too late, when you start seeing the signs of frank AIDS, that's late.