Is my tinnitus actually a symptom of a chronic viral infection in my ears?

You have solved the mystery. Having seen many, many, pronouncements about causes of tinnitus, almost no one has recognized the presence of a chronic viral infection as a cause. You can pinpoint the exact beginning of this, and you were puzzled by it coming out of nowhere and then being a persistent presence thereafter, despite anything you did to try to work on this. The reason it could not be altered was because you lacked an understanding of the dynamics, and we wanted you to get to a point where you were dealing with this possibility of a chronic virus so you would have a reason to make the connection and ask the right questions, and are finally doing so now. We would regard presence of a chronic virus as a question to be asked each and every time someone reports this symptom to at least rule it out, and if there is a causal connection, to do healing. There is a possibility through retrocausal healing of reversing this for many people, especially those who remain ignorant about causes, because then they will not have ingrained opinions about the doability of it resolving as a symptom.