Funny, Ted but not as bizarre as it sounds. The plants in fact could - hopefully will - develop immunity to the viruses eventually. That will happen over a long time of course but the ones that survive virus infection without much in the way of symptoms will live on, and the weaker infected ones will die off in due course. It's nature's way. So, in a way it behooves us to grow the plants even if they are infected. We don't help nature develop resistance or immunity if we kill off all our infected plants.
Then hopefully the plant breeders will breed resistant plants, not the weaker ones just because they are pretty. And once again we will defeat a virus - or Mother Nature will do it for us.
Guess where I learned this? The Citrus Greening disease here in Florida has been around for years now, and we DO have some citrus that are surviving it plus a remedy that is not yet a cure. Still, UF stopped recommending that people remove their citrus trees if they are infected because in order to build up our citrus industry again one day, we need to breed the resistant plants.
