Merged US may close Cuba Embassy over 'health attacks'

[dann]

Recapitulation:

But I cannot find any previous episodes of MPI that follow that kind of pattern. They happen in places like schools and offices, not multiple locations throughout the world.

Did you take a look at Wikipedia's page List of mass hysteria cases? I mean, it would be the obvious place to go for somebody who was actually trying to find "previous episodes of MPI that follow that kind of pattern" and not just pretending. Or maybe you did go there, but never bothered to read beyond the Middle Ages.

If you take a look at 1950−2000, you will not only find the "Pokemon panic — incident in which thousands of Japanese children seemingly suffered seizures while watching "Dennō Senshi Porygon", an episode of Pokémon," but also "Malaysia (1970s–1980s) — Mass hysteria in Malaysia affected school-age girls and young women working in factories," "Belgium (June 1999) — Coca-Cola withdrew 30 million units of its soft-drink product from sale after more than a hundred people in Belgium and northern France complained of cramps, nausea and other problems after consuming the soft drinks," and the "Day-care sex-abuse hysteria — a moral panic that occurred primarily in the 1980s and early 1990s featuring charges against day-care providers of several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse."

Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s, and featured charges against day-care providers accused of committing several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse. The collective cases are often colloquially called the “Satanic Panic.” A prominent case in Kern County, California, United States, first publicized the issue of day-care sexual abuse, and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade. The Kern County case was followed by cases elsewhere in the United States, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and various European countries.
Day-care sex-abuse hysteria (Wikipedia)

This one was obviously mass hysteria and not mass psychogenic illness, but it is obvious that the media helped spread it, that it wasn't very sudden and anything but localized:

Significant cases
3.1 McMartin Preschool
3.2 Country Walk
3.3 Fells Acres Day Care Center
3.4 Bernard Baran
3.5 The Bronx Five
3.6 Wee Care Nursery School
3.7 Glendale Montessori
3.8 Little Rascals
3.9 Dale Akiki
3.10 Oak Hill satanic ritual abuse trial
3.11 Wenatchee child abuse prosecutions
3.12 Christchurch Civic Crèche
3.13 Martensville satanic sex scandal

But let us move on to 2000-present:

"Mexico City (2006–2007) — Between October 2006 and June 2007, near Chalco, a working-class suburb of Mexico City, mass hysteria resulted in an outbreak of unusual symptoms suffered by more than 500 adolescent female students at Children's Village School (Villa de las Ninas), a Catholic boarding-school. The afflicted students had difficulty walking and were feverish and nauseated, some becoming partially paralyzed."

This one was limited in location, and I include it only because at least one of the Danish HPV-vaccine girls also had difficulty walking and was partially paralyzed. It was extremely effective on TV, although to me it didn't look like any actual disease I have ever heard of but more like something of a religious nature. However, cases like this aren't usually brought to my attention, so I can't really say what real cases are supposed to look like. By the way, I seem to remember hearing that this particular girl got over it. I can understand if she doesn't want to go on TV again and tell the world about it.

Afghanistan (2009–) — Starting around 2009, a spate of apparent poisonings at girls' schools across Afghanistan began to be reported, with symptoms including dizziness, fainting, and vomiting.

Brunei (2010) — In April and May 2010, incidents of mass hysteria occurred at two all-girls secondary schools in Brunei. The most recent notable event happened on the 24 April 2014 in a public secondary school.

Le Roy, New York (2011–12) — After 12 high school girls developed Tourette-like symptoms in 2011, their school was tested for toxins, and all other factors for their symptoms were ruled out. The case, and some of the girls and their parents, gained national media attention. In January 2012, several more students and a 36-year-old adult female came forward with similar symptoms. They were all diagnosed with conversion disorder.

Sri Lanka (2012) — From November 15–20, 2012, incidents of mass hysteria occurred at 15 schools in Sri Lanka.

Recurrent epidemic of mass hysteria in Nepal (2016–2018)

And the list doesn't even mention my absolute favorite, koro!

Koro is a culture bound delusional disorder in which an individual has an overpowering belief that their sex organs are retracting and will disappear, despite the lack of any true longstanding changes to the genitals. Koro is also known as shrinking penis, and it is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
The syndrome occurs worldwide, and mass hysteria of genital-shrinkage anxiety has a history in Africa, Asia and Europe. In the United States and Europe, the syndrome is commonly known as genital retraction syndrome.
The condition can be diagnosed through psychological assessment along with physical examination to rule out genuine disorders of the genitalia that could be causing true retraction.
Koro (medicine) (Wikipedia)

Unlike xjx388 and Checkmite, I read books about mass psychogenic illness and mass hysteria, which is why the excuse that they just can't find anything annoys the hell out of me.

 

[Checkmite]

Did you take a look at Wikipedia's page List of mass hysteria cases? I mean, it would be the obvious place to go for somebody who was actually trying to find "previous episodes of MPI that follow that kind of pattern" and not just pretending. Or maybe you did go there, but never bothered to read beyond the Middle Ages.

You've completely misread what he wrote. By "multiple locations throughout the world", he's talking about a single protracted incident of "mass psychogenic illness" in which a handful of the victims/patients are in one place and another handful who have succumbed to the same incident are on a completely different continent on the opposite side of the world, as you contend is the case here.

Every single incident you cite from the Wikipedia article was confined to a small group in one locale.

 

[xjx388]

Here we go again. I have explained this several times, but let me do it again for the sake of xjx388:




That is how most mass-psychogenic-illness incidents used to occur - before the internet and social media (and even TV). Rumors don't spread the way they used to. In the case of the HPV vaccine scare in Denmark, the leading proponent of the idea that the vaccine had damaged the girls argued that they were from different parts of the country, so the girls couldn't have shared the rumor about the vaccine. He was an old guy, just about to retire, and obviously not familiar with social media. A journalist found the website where (some of) the girls had shared their (alleged) experiences with the vaccine.
As for TV: Did 'Pokemon' Actually Give Kids Seizures In the 90s? (Vice, May 31, 2017)




"These cases" being the carefully examined and selected group people out of who-knows-how-many alleged attack victims where something was actually wrong! You seem to be incapable of understanding that in an outbreak of mass psychogenic illness, something may actually be wrong with some of the people. They may suffer from actual physical disorders. And it is very likely that Patient Zero in Havana was such a case.

A similar thing happened with the Danish HPV girls. They were thoroughly examined, and some of them had diverse illnesses, but when the whole group of vaccinated girls were compared to a group of unvaccinated girls, the percentage of girls with all kinds of disorders wasn't higher in the vaccinated group because the HPV vaccine had not caused those disorders, which became even more obvious when many of the girls turned out to have reported similar symptoms before they were vaccinated.

In the case of the Japanese children, it is not unlikely that a few of them had epileptic seizures caused by the flashing lights, but it would have been a minority of the "12,000 kids (who) experienced dizziness, blurred vision, and convulsions after watching the show."

If you take 12,000 children, some of them are bound to suffer from epilepsy:



If you take thousands of American embassy workers, CIA agents, soldiers, national security officials all over the world, even some of those are bound to suffer from epilepsy, too. A considerable number of them suffer from ingrown toenails, but that doesn't mean that they are the victims of hostile attacks!

Do you understand why your argument about "far-flung locations with people who don't know each other" is no longer valid? We don't live in the middle-ages anymore.




No, Cubans living in unsealed homes will not be at risk of exposure to an airborne chemical sprayed indoors unless they are in the room when it happens, which they aren't. Your argument is nonsensical. But you are right that they don't seem to have been affected. Neither do the fumigators themselves, apparently, but they are a much smaller group of people. The reason why the Canadian study suggesting fumigation as at least a probably cause is that it points to an agent that might have caused some of the anomalies found in the brains of Canadian embassy workers, an agent that was actually contained in the pesticides used for fumigation at the time.
The U.S. studies hypothesize a so-far-nonexistent sci-fi weapon.




I don't see how you can rule them out, but I don't know anything about fumigation in Moscow, China or at the White House. Didn't they have the latter fumigated after Trump left?!
However, mass psychogenic illness does satisfactorily explain other 'incidents', unless your claim is that the Moscow-and-China-and-elsewhere cases never heard of 'Havana syndrome'.

No. The mosquito treatments were happening outside, not inside. That is standard protocol for mosquito abatement. You don’t spray for mosquitoes inside buildings. Indoor “spraying” would be limited to surface applications, not fumigation -at least, not while people were present in the building. And again, it would be for other insects, not mosquitoes.

Further, Temephos is a larvicide, which would definitely not be used indoors. In fact, it’s primarily used to treat standing water -ponds, lakes, etc. It’s likely that anyone living in or visiting Cuba would have chronic exposure to Temephos through water sources and overspray carried in the wind.

 

[dann]

You've completely misread what he wrote. By "multiple locations throughout the world", he's talking about a single protracted incident of "mass psychogenic illness" in which a handful of the victims/patients are in one place and another handful who have succumbed to the same incident are on a completely different continent on the opposite side of the world, as you contend is the case here.

Every single incident you cite from the Wikipedia article was confined to a small group in one locale.

Some of the cases in Wikipedia's list are confined to "a small group in one locale." The ones I quoted weren't, unless your definition of "locale" is a country (or several countries).

You are grasping at straws. Most communities aren't spread out over the world. The Danish HPV-vaccine girls were spread out over one country. If English had been their native language, the vaccine scare might have spread further than that.

 

[dann]

No. The mosquito treatments were happening outside, not inside. That is standard protocol for mosquito abatement. You don’t spray for mosquitoes inside buildings. Indoor “spraying” would be limited to surface applications, not fumigation -at least, not while people were present in the building. And again, it would be for other insects, not mosquitoes.

This is bloody absurd! I have seen fumigation in Cuba with my own eyes when my ex-wife's flat was fumigated. People were told to leave the building, and the fumigators would go from flat to flat, fumigating all rooms and staircases. Does this look like it is "happening outside, not inside," to you? Does it look like "surface applications"?
Cuba desarrolla programa universal de vigilancia antivectorial (Agencia Prensa Latina, March 21, 2014)


It didn't happen "while people were present in the building." Nobody claimed that it did. I don't remember if the fumigators themselves were as unprotected as in the videos.
While the fumigation was going on, the Revolutionary Committee also told people to make sure that no bottles, cans, pots or anything else that could contain water were left lying around outside.
You know notthing about this, but I guess this is another one of those things you couldn't find because you never looked.

Further, Temephos is a larvicide, which would definitely not be used indoors. In fact, it’s primarily used to treat standing water -ponds, lakes, etc. It’s likely that anyone living in or visiting Cuba would have chronic exposure to Temephos through water sources and overspray carried in the wind.

Look at the video, read the article. It's about mosquitoes! When I observed fumigation in 2006, it was because of dengue. In the case of the fumigation of hotel rooms and other dwellings of American spies and diplomats in 2016, it was ordered by the embassies because they feared zika.
Ask them if they ordered ponds and lakes to be fumigated, too. (There aren't any in the immediate vicinity of the embassy or the hotels mentioned in this context.)


ETA:

The report says the diplomats' illnesses coincided with increased fumigation in and around residences where they lived.
Mosquito fumigation may have caused mystery 'Havana syndrom', study says (Guardian, Sep. 19, 2019)

 

[Checkmite]

Some of the cases in Wikipedia's list are confined to "a small group in one locale." The ones I quoted weren't, unless your definition of "locale" is a country (or several countries).

You are grasping at straws. Most communities aren't spread out over the world. The Danish HPV-vaccine girls were spread out over one country. If English had been their native language, the vaccine scare might have spread further than that.

"Spread out over one country" that is roughly the size of Maine. Yes, that is geographically a small and confined locale.

And the only MPI you cited that even claims to involve "several countries" specifically involved a portion of Belgium and northern France, which is misleading because international border aside as a practical matter of fact the incident occurred in a limited region that is a contiguous interacting Francophone community.

As for "koro", culture-bound syndrome and MPI are not the same thing, not even nearly. Actual mental-health experts recognize that the propensity for isolated cases of a particular kind of somatic disorder in a certain cultural community over time, and a concentrated outbreak of rapid-onset, (and most importantly) mass somatic symptoms are different things and have different causes and mechanisms underlying them, however superficially similar they may seem to folks who read Teh Googles and consider themselves qualified to speak as experts on the thing they've looked up.

 

[xjx388]

Some of the cases in Wikipedia's list are confined to "a small group in one locale." The ones I quoted weren't, unless your definition of "locale" is a country (or several countries).

You are grasping at straws. Most communities aren't spread out over the world. The Danish HPV-vaccine girls were spread out over one country. If English had been their native language, the vaccine scare might have spread further than that.

I could see MPI being a factor in Havana. It’s possible some people reporting symptoms didn’t have any kind of exposure to any trigger and thus had psychogenic symptoms. The US diplomat community assigned to Cuba is probably very close knit and I wouldn’t rule it out completely. But there is still a number of cases where something happened to them.

Every one of the examples you cite from Wikipedia happened in schools, offices or other close knit, close proximity groups. With the US diplomats, they have happened in far flung locations among people who didn’t know each other. I guess it’s possible that media coverage could play a factor and predispose people to something, but it does not explain the brain damage. I just think it’s highly unlikely to be psychogenic, not completely.

 

[xjx388]

This is bloody absurd! I have seen fumigation in Cuba with my own eyes when my ex-wife's flat was fumigated. People were told to leave the building, and the fumigators would go from flat to flat, fumigating all rooms and staircases. Does this look like it is "happening outside, not inside," to you? Does it look like "surface applications"?
Cuba desarrolla programa universal de vigilancia antivectorial (Agencia Prensa Latina, March 21, 2014)


It didn't happen "while people were present in the building." Nobody claimed that it did. I don't remember if the fumigators themselves were as unprotected as in the videos.
While the fumigation was going on, the Revolutionary Committee also told people to make sure that no bottles, cans, pots or anything else that could contain water were left lying around outside.
You know notthing about this, but I guess this is another one of those things you couldn't find because you never looked.




Look at the video, read the article. It's about mosquitoes! When I observed fumigation in 2006, it was because of dengue. In the case of the fumigation of hotel rooms and other dwellings of American spies and diplomats in 2016, it was ordered by the embassies because they feared zika.
Ask them if they ordered ponds and lakes to be fumigated, too. (There aren't any in the immediate vicinity of the embassy or the hotels mentioned in this context.)


ETA:

Pest control is something I know a little about. An organophosphate like Temephos would not be sprayed inside a building; it’s absurd. Maybe they are spraying something inside but it’s really pretty useless for mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are controlled primarily by eliminating standing water, spraying ponds/lakes, interfering with their breeding and good santitation. Sure, you can knockdown some adults but that does very little good.

Now those videos of fogging inside Cuban homes…that seems pretty clear to me that pesticide exposure would be something everyone in Cuba would need to worry about. If “Havana Syndrome” is really caused by organophosphate pesticides, then it would be common in Cuba to experience those symptoms. There would be no mystery.

And if they are indeed spraying organophosphates in homes…that’s pretty dang irresponsible.

 

[dann]

"Spread out over one country" that is roughly the size of Maine. Yes, that is geographically a small and confined locale.

You can keep coming up with new definitions of locale, but it doesn't make any difference. It used to be very small communities like a school or a convent, but that was before TV and cellphones. Rumors no longer spread the way they used to. Probably due to the changes that both media and social media have brought about, the definition has changed, too. It is no longer a question of locale:

Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder, epidemic hysteria, or mass hysteria, is the rapid spread of illness signs and symptoms affecting members of a cohesive groupMass psychogenic illness (Wikipedia)

The 'Havana syndrome' started in a cohesive group of Americans working for the U.S. government in Havana, soon spread to Americans working for the U.S. government abroad, and now it seems to be all Americans working for the U.S. government everywhere.
The group is still more cohesive than HPV-vaccinated girls in Denmark, Coca-Cola consumers in Belgium and France or Japanese children who watch Pokemon cartoons.

And the only MPI you cited that even claims to involve "several countries" specifically involved a portion of Belgium and northern France, which is misleading because international border aside as a practical matter of fact the incident occurred in a limited region that is a contiguous interacting Francophone community.

Yeah, right! You are now simply inventing stuff that people may have in common: Francophone! I think it is time to remind you of the Anglophone community of CIA agents and other U.S. security and intelligence operators ...

As for "koro", culture-bound syndrome and MPI are not the same thing, not even nearly. Actual mental-health experts recognize that the propensity for isolated cases of a particular kind of somatic disorder in a certain cultural community over time, and a concentrated outbreak of rapid-onset, (and most importantly) mass somatic symptoms are different things and have different causes and mechanisms underlying them, however superficially similar they may seem to folks who read Teh Googles and consider themselves qualified to speak as experts on the thing they've looked up.

You are the one who considers yourself an expert on things you have googled. I never claimed to be any kind of expert, but unlike you I read the books. I guess it bothers you that Wikipedia describes koro as mass hysteria.
So let's go to an actual expert instead of your desperate attempt to find somebody on Google who agrees with you:

The premise of this article holds that the typification of individual koro as a medical syndrome has been inappropriately applied to collective episodes, and that based on an examination of their characteristic features koro epidemics should be reclassified as a sociological phenomenon involving mass social delusions. There is neither consistent nor compelling evidence to indicate that participants of collective episodes are psychologically disturbed or exhibiting somatoform reactions, but are experiencing the physiological consequences of anxiety generated by a false belief, and the cognitive consequences of altered perceptual sets. The misclassification of epidemic koro appears to be based on the fantastic, implausible nature of the participants' beliefs per se relative to Eurocentric social realities, and alienated from its local context and meaning.
The Medicalization of Exotic Deviance: A Sociological Perspective on Epidemic Koro (March 1998) (Researchgate)

In other words, koro seems to be very similar to the physiological consequences of anxiety generated by the false belief that a hostile enemy with ray guns is out to get you and that the sound of crickets is a super-sonic attack.
Did any of the CIA agents mention impotence as one of the symptoms? I seriously doubt that I would be able to get it up if I believed that I was being attacked by microwaves ...

 

[Checkmite]

Yeah, right! You are now simply inventing stuff that people may have in common: Francophone! I think it is time to remind you of the Anglophone community of CIA agents and other U.S. security and intelligence operators ...

...which is not contiguous and confined to one place, unlike every other group historically experiencing mass hysteria.

You are the one who considers yourself an expert on things you have googled. I never claimed to be any kind of expert, but unlike you I read the books.

lol I'm going to frame this quote

I guess it bothers you that Wikipedia describes koro as mass hysteria.
So let's go to an actual expert instead of your desperate attempt to find somebody on Google who agrees with you:

Ooops, looks like the DSM-V, which was compiled in 2013, still decided to include culture-bound syndromes under the publication-specific term "cultural concepts of distress"; so I guess Dr. March 1998's arguments failed to gain acceptance in the psychiatric community or convince the APA's pathology experts. Ah well, they're certainly a better judge of the validity of his arguments than I. Although I suppose you could go all-in and insist that he's right and all them other scientists are wrong and maybe even consciously lying, like with that global warmings hoax or whatever.

Perhaps it had something to do with the casual ethnocentrism of appearing to refer to some of the culture-specific spiritual and religious beliefs that tend to inform culture-bound disorders using terms like "social delusions" and "false beliefs"; but that's purely speculative on my part - I wasn't in the room.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

...which is not contiguous and confined to one place, unlike every other group historically experiencing mass hysteria.

Therefore mind-rays. Pathetic.

 

[dann]

Alien attack? Mass hysteria? Conspiracy?

Therefore mind-rays. Pathetic.

But it sells!

On May 12, the Times reported that the “mysterious episodes” causing “brain injuries in spies, diplomats, soldiers, and other U.S. personnel…now number more than 130 people, far more than previously known.” Almost two weeks later The New Yorker ran a follow-up to its earlier Havana Syndrome feature, complete with a harrowing account of two White House staffers whose lives were upended after their brains apparently got zapped in a London hotel. “Top officials in both the Trump and the Biden administrations privately suspect that Russia is responsible for the Havana Syndrome,” staff writer Adam Entous wrote. “Their working hypothesis is that agents of the GRU, the Russian military’s intelligence service, have been aiming microwave-radiation devices at U.S. officials to collect intelligence from their computers and cell phones.”
On Monday the Senate unanimously passed a bill providing financial aid to government employees with brain injuries that were likely the result of “directed energy attacks.” And on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “We are in the midst, at the president’s direction, with the National Security Council in the lead, of coordinating a government-wide review, including the intelligence community, the State Department, the Defense Department, to try to get to the bottom of what caused them.”
UFOS? HAVANA SYNDROME? LAB LEAK? THE POST-TRUMP NEWS CYCLE IS STRANGER THAN FICTION (Vanity Fair, June 10, 2021)

 

[Checkmite]

Therefore mind-rays. Pathetic.

Rule of "so" without even using the word. I'm actually impressed.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

But it sells!

Based on my quick read of the Vanity Fair articles on that page, I'll be subscribing to it to replace this forum when the ISF finally goes to the Internet graveyard.

 

[dann]

The White House National Security Council is leading in setting up the panels. Sources would not describe what will distinguish the two groups, but said they are designed to take a holistic approach to the investigation.
(...)
“More can be accomplished if the right questions, kinds of experts and data are brought together in a synergistic manner,” said Dr. David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University who chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee that studied Havana syndrome cases and produced a report for the Trump administration late last year.
“Full access to all available intelligence collections, science, and clinical data will be key,” Relman said.
Biden forming new panels of experts to study ‘Havana syndrome’ (Charlotte Observer, June 11, 2021)

One of the problems with the NAS report was that the committee had not had full access to the facts of the case, but I wonder why Biden has formed two two panels to study the same thing.

 

[dann]

"Certainly the Russians are one of the key suspects. We don't know for sure, but keep in mind there have been more than a hundred American public servants who have been injured by these directed energy attacks," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, during an interview with CBS' "Face The Nation." "We need not only to take care of their medical needs, but also to find out who it is."

She added, "I hope the president will bring up this issue with President Putin directly."

Under the Trump administration, some of those affected by these apparent attacks involving suspected microwaves said that senior leaders at the CIA, including former Director Gina Haspel, did not believe them and, as a result, the CIA health officers did not authorize them for the state-of-the-art treatment given to U.S. military service members for traumatic brain injuries at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Will Biden raise microwave directed-energy attacks on US spies and diplomats with Putin? (Fox News, June 15, 2021)

In the video accompanying the Fox article, Collins talks about directed energy attacks as if they were facts.
I am surprised that Fox News talks about US spies. And I wonder if Trump ever raised microwave-directed energy attacks on US spies and diplomats with Putin ...


One of the alleged victims, Marc Polymeropoulos, who was never in Havana, has told Business Insider about his treatment for 'Havana syndrome':

Once a week, Marc Polymeropoulos goes to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for art therapy and acupuncture.
(...)
Since then (Jan. 2020), Polymeropoulos' treatment has involved mostly alternative therapies like meditation, deep breathing, and art.
A former CIA officer opens up about his Havana Syndrome: 3 years of headaches, early retirement, and a fight for care (Business Insider, June 26, 2021)

 

[dann]

As for the microwave-weapon idea, it isn't getting any more likely:

But many experts are skeptical. Cheryl Rofer, a retired chemist from Los Alamos National Laboratory, said that if diplomats had been attacked by a microwave weapon, doctors would see other physical clues.

"The evidence would be on the outside of their body," she told Insider. "It would be like a thermal burn, if you want to get really grisly."

That's because water in the inner ear and head that absorbed microwave energy would also heat up, causing visible scarring.

What's more, Rofer wrote in a Foreign Policy article last month, a microwave weapon that could penetrate through walls and windows would require a power source so big that it would be impossible to miss.

"It'd be equivalent to 200 laptop batteries," she said. "Obviously that wouldn't fit in a backpack. The thing would have to be in a van or building."

But David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University who led the National Academy of Sciences team, told Insider that in his view, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."A former CIA officer opens up about his Havana Syndrome: 3 years of headaches, early retirement, and a fight for care (Business Insider, June 26, 2021)

So I guess that alien attack, mass hysteria and conspiracy are all still valid hypotheses according to the National Academy of Sciences. And how about divine intervention?!

 

[dann]

Much like the Vanity Fair article from June 10, a new BuzzFeedNews article also looks at the 'Havana syndrome' in the context of other current news stories, i.e. the UFO reports and the Wuhan lab leak rumors:

Intelligence agencies face big hurdles to solving scientific mysteries like these. The first is that the science is at best absent or half-baked, said Rofer. In reality, scientific investigations of any complexity usually take years. In the meantime, intelligence reports can explore multiple theories, with the most entertaining ones often getting the most attention. “Everyone loves a good death ray,” she said, referring to a theory for why diplomats across the world appear to be suffering from neurological injuries. “It's just not as much fun to hear there's no evidence for a microwave weapon.”
(...)
The problem is there’s no good explanation for the syndrome. Although it was initially reported as a brain injury caused by “sonic attacks,” explanations have since ranged from crickets to a tropical illness to pesticides to mass psychology. A National Academies of Sciences report in December 2020 said that pulsed microwave weapons that could cause neurological injuries are the “most plausible” explanation for the illness. But experts in microwave technology have fiercely criticized the theory.
(...)
Under paranoia’s shade, all the sinister explanations for UFOs, Havana syndrome, and the pandemic fester on the lack of evidence to prove or disprove them. “We actually have to have evidence to prove anything,” Rofer said. “You can’t prove that it’s not a microwave weapon. You can’t prove that it’s not a UFO. You can’t prove it’s not a lab leak. You can’t prove a negative here.”
US Intelligence Agencies Are Trying To Solve Scientific Mysteries And Failing Badly (BuzzFeedNews, June 26, 2021)

Excellent article. I can recommend the whole thing, including what it tells us about the UFO stories and the Wuhan theories.
And then there is this:

Staffers were then asked to report similar symptoms, with 95 people eventually treated or evaluated in the first outbreak. Only 15 of those people appear to have actually had the syndrome,

 

[carlosy]

Now it happens in Vienna:

Roughly two dozen possible new cases have been reported by U.S. spies and diplomats in the Austrian capital, more than in any other city except Havana itself.

Since Joe Biden took office, about two dozen U.S. intelligence officers, diplomats, and other government officials in Vienna have reported experiencing mysterious afflictions similar to the Havana Syndrome. U.S. officials say the number of possible new cases in the Austrian capital—long a nexus of U.S. and Russian espionage—is now greater than the number reported by officials in any city except for Havana itself, where the first cases were reported.

Vienna is home to many officials from around the world who have access to information of interest to intelligence services.
The exact cause of the ailments in Vienna, which U.S. government agencies formally refer to as “anomalous health incidents” or “unexplained health incidents,” remains unknown, but in response to the surge the C.I.A., the State Department, and other agencies are redoubling their efforts to determine the cause, and to identify the culprit or culprits. A C.I.A. spokesperson said that the agency’s director, William Burns, was “personally engaged with personnel affected by anomalous health incidents and is highly committed to their care and to determining the cause of these incidents.” Privately, Burns has called the maladies “attacks” rather than incidents.

...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/vienna-is-the-new-havana-syndrome-hotspot

 

[Planigale]

Now it happens in Vienna:


https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/vienna-is-the-new-havana-syndrome-hotspot

Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia