At this age, the cottontails still cannot live without motherâs milk. 3 day old cottontail (right) next to 14 day old cottontail (left) Seven to Nine Days Old: Similar to a 4-5 day old cottontail, there should not be too much difference at this stage. Eyes should be beginning to open and may look like little slits.
In doing so, the virus destroys the ability of the infected cells to do their job in the immune system. The body then loses the ability to fight many infections. When a person with HIV has an extremely low number of CD4 cells or certain rare infections, doctors call this stage of disease AIDS.
HIV disrupts this process by directly infecting the helper T-cells. Your initial immune response does get rid of a great deal of HIV, but some of it manages to survive and infect these important cells. Once the infected helper T-cells are activated, they work to create new viruses instead of doing the job they are supposed to do in your immune system. In addition, many helper T-cells are destroyed in the HIV replication process. For more information, see NIAID's The Immune System.