As for the social side, the Chicken Pox virus causes a form of Herpes too (H. Zoster), and are similarly never "gone" once you've been infected. I'm guessing the reason there's no stigma there too is because we don't associate Chicken Pox with sex and intimacy. Hell, some parents (like mine 9_9) intentionally infected their kids with Chicken Pox at Pox Parties, due to mistakenly thinking they were protecting them from getting Shingles later in life.
It wasn't mistakenly preventing shingles that was the reason for Pox Parties before the vaccine was developed. It was because if you don't get chicken pox as a child and are exposed as an adult, it can kill you.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that was the part that was mistaken. To my knowledge, it can potentially kill the elderly, or those with compromised immune systems, but it's no more severe in adults than in children. Googling briefly turned this up, for whatever you trust Time Magazine as a source:
Can chicken pox be more severe in adults?
Most people get chicken pox when they are young, but the symptoms can be more severe among people who catch the infection in an older age. They include loss of appetite, fever, headache, tiredness and rashes, all of which can be more taxing on the health of elderly adults.
Herpes is not a retrovirus
Source? Assuming you're referring to Herpes Simplex, I believe it is. "Herpes" is a blanket term for recurrent lesions caused by several different viruses, all of which (to my knowledge) are retroviruses rather than DNA viruses. This comes from a professor who was mistaken about the whole "blood is blue inside you" thing, though, so I'm going to check now too.
EDIT:
Nope, you're right. Looks like it is a DNA virus. Thanks for the catch! That means they don't hide in your genes then. Looks like they stay dormant in nerve cells that don't get screened for infection, and come out to play when the immune system is weak.
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