>>23463923
it's kinda like prion diseases
they grow exponentially after the initial infection, but it takes like fifteen years for any harmful symptoms to appear
a cure wouldn't even need to get rid of the prions (seemingly almost indestructible, they can survive autoclaves iirc), it would just need to slow down the progress of an infection by like 5x, and the host would die of natural causes before it ever became a problem