While viral latency exhibits no active viral shedding nor causes any pathologies or symptoms, the virus is still able to reactivate via external activators (sunlight, stress, etc) to cause an acute infection. In the case of herpes simplex virus, which generally infects an individual for life, a serotype of the virus reactivates occasionally to cause cold sores. Although the sores are quickly resolved by the immune system, they may be a minor annoyance from time to time. In the case of varicella zoster virus, after an initial acute infection (chickenpox) the virus lies dormant until reactivated as herpes zoster.