Merged US may close Cuba Embassy over 'health attacks'

[dann]

Perhaps a lot of people who are exposed to extensive fumigacion with Temefos get a brain damage, but the American diplomats were the only ones who thought they were being attacked, and were tested?

Interesting hypothesis, but not very likely. I have explained why Cubans in general wouldn't have been exposed extensively. If the people working with fumigation were, I find it unlikely that they wouldn't have mentioned their symptoms to their doctors and that those symptoms wouldn't have come up in conversations among themselves at the company.
I know a recently retired doctor of occupational medicine in Havana, Caristina. I'll ask her.

 

[steenkh]

Interesting hypothesis, but not very likely. I have explained why Cubans in general wouldn't have been exposed extensively. If the people working with fumigation were, I find it unlikely that they wouldn't have mentioned their symptoms to their doctors and that those symptoms wouldn't have come up in conversations among themselves at the company.
I know a recently retired doctor of occupational medicine in Havana, Caristina. I'll ask her.

To be honest, I was just musing. I do not really think that fumigation would cause brain damage to lots of people, but only American diplomats find out.

It would be more interesting if you could find out why 40 diplomats would have brain damage compared to a control group of the same size. Even if the 40 diplomats are a selected subset from a lot larger group, it still seems odd that diplomats at the U.S. embassy have such high incidence of brain damage.

But then, I don’t know anything about such brain damage. I was at a lecture once where I was told about age-related brain damage. This point here was that such damage grows all the time, and is unavoidable, but can be slowed down. I believe that the JAMA paper surely has excluded age-related damage, so that should not be a factor.

 

[dann]

A control group of the same size doesn't work because the group of Americans in Havana working for or through the embassy had already been selected based on one criterion: They were the ones with symptoms who turned out to also have actual detectable, physiological brain damage. You would have to start with a control group as large as all Americans in Havana affiliated with the embassy because
1) Some of those developed symptoms and were then examined
2) Some of those who were examined then turned out to have physiological brand damage according to the MRIs.

So the question is if a randomly selected group with age groups corresponding to those at the U.S. embassy and the size of the original group would have a similar number of people with brain damage.
I had a neighbor who got very severe Alzheimer's in her early fifties. The same thing happened to an office worker at my high school. And as for hearing loss:

Approximately one in three people in the United States between the ages of 65 and 74 has hearing loss, and nearly half of those older than 75 have difficulty hearing. Having trouble hearing can make it hard to understand and follow a doctor's advice, respond to warnings, and hear phones, doorbells, and smoke alarms. Hearing loss can also make it hard to enjoy talking with family and friends, leading to feelings of isolation.
Age-related hearing loss most often occurs in both ears, affecting them equally. Because the loss is gradual, if you have age-related hearing loss you may not realize that you've lost some of your ability to hear.
Age-Related Hearing Loss (NIDCD)

Some people don't realize until they are tested for other reasons, for instance, if they were the victims of a vicious microwave attack sounding like crickets!
But I am not sure if the ones whose only symptom was the loss of hearing were included in the final group.
I can no longer hear grasshoppers. Crickets are loud and clear.

ETA: It just occurs to me that if the 40 include people from other diplomatic missions than the Havana embassy, the consulate in Guangzhou, for instance, that would mean that the control group would have to be correspondingly bigger.

 

[xjx388]

A control group of the same size doesn't work because the group of Americans in Havana working for or through the embassy had already been selected based on one criterion: They were the ones with symptoms who turned out to also have actual detectable, physiological brain damage. You would have to start with a control group as large as all Americans in Havana affiliated with the embassy because
1) Some of those developed symptoms and were then examined
2) Some of those who were examined then turned out to have physiological brand damage according to the MRIs.

So the question is if a randomly selected group with age groups corresponding to those at the U.S. embassy and the size of the original group would have a similar number of people with brain damage.
I had a neighbor who got very severe Alzheimer's in her early fifties. The same thing happened to an office worker at my high school. And as for hearing loss:

Some people don't realize until they are tested for other reasons, for instance, if they were the victims of a vicious microwave attack sounding like crickets!
But I am not sure if the ones whose only symptom was the loss of hearing were included in the final group.
I can no longer hear grasshoppers. Crickets are loud and clear.

ETA: It just occurs to me that if the 40 include people from other diplomatic missions than the Havana embassy, the consulate in Guangzhou, for instance, that would mean that the control group would have to be correspondingly bigger.

From the JAMA neuroimaging study:

Two independent control cohorts were used for comparative advanced imaging analytics. The first control cohort (control set 1) was designed to optimally match the high educational and professional status of the patients and consisted of demographically similar (in terms of age, ethnicity, and education) healthy adults, holding at least 1 college degree, and performing jobs that required dexterity and multitasking. To improve generalizability of the comparisons conducted, a second control cohort (control set 2) was assembled that consisted of healthy individuals with a broader spectrum of education and skills.

That seems like a pretty good design to me. The patients were only those in Cuba.

 

[dann]

It sounds strange to me:
You take all the people who complain of a number of symptoms, brain-scan them until you are left with 40 whose brain scans show anomalies, and then you compare that group to two cohorts of "healthy adults" and "healthy individuals". How large were the two cohorts? As many as the people at the U.S. embassy who had symptoms before they were brain scanned? Or as many as the people at the embassy with or without symptoms?
When it says healthy adults/individual, it sounds as if they had no symptoms at all.

 

[xjx388]

It sounds strange to me:
You take all the people who complain of a number of symptoms, brain-scan them until you are left with 40 whose brain scans show anomalies,

Where are you getting this idea from? That’s not what the study says.

and then you compare that group to two cohorts of "healthy adults" and "healthy individuals". How large were the two cohorts? As many as the people at the U.S. embassy who had symptoms before they were brain scanned? Or as many as the people at the embassy with or without symptoms?
When it says healthy adults/individual, it sounds as if they had no symptoms at all.

You seem to be laboring under some misconceptions. I suggest you read the study itself, where you will find details that seem to be missing in your “analysis.”

In short: 44 People who reported symptoms were referred to the University of Pennsylvania team by DOS for evaluation and treatment. They eliminated 3 people from the study who had prior history of TBI and one person who did not give consent. The control group was made up of 2 groups of healthy adults of comparable age: 1) 21 with comparable education and job experience, 2) 27 with a wider range education and skills.

It’s simple. It’s a good study design. It’s not perfect.

What exactly is your objection?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Washington (CNN)Federal agencies are investigating at least two possible incidents on US soil, including one near the White House in November of last year, that appear similar to mysterious, invisible attacks that have led to debilitating symptoms for dozens of US personnel abroad.

Multiple sources familiar with the matter tell CNN that while the Pentagon and other agencies probing the matter have reached no clear conclusions on what happened, the fact that such an attack might have taken place so close to the White House is particularly alarming.

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/29/poli...directed-energy-attack-white-house/index.html

 

[dann]

The CNN story doesn't make the conspiracy theory any less ridiculous. On the one hand, it insists on talking about attacks, but then on the other hand, there is this:

In one incident that was investigated, Marines on a remote base in Syria developed flu-like symptoms shortly after a Russian helicopter flew over the base -- raising immediate concerns that it could be one of these strange attacks. But "it was quickly traced, where they had bad food and where no one else on the base had the same symptoms," said one former US official with knowledge of the incident. It was also determined by a defense physician that the symptoms had begun prior to the Russia patrol, a defense official told CNN.

The Syria episode highlights the difficulties that US officials face in trying to pin down what is and isn't an attack. The symptoms often vary, and officials still have no clear sense of how the unknown adversary is doing what it's doing. At least one former US official with knowledge of the matter said that investigators still haven't completely ruled out the possibility that the symptoms are caused by some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon rather than a weapon.
US investigating possible mysterious directed energy attack near White House (CNN, April 29, 2021)

The only reason why the Americans in Havana think that they were the victims of an attack was the sound that they heard, which turned out to be crickets. That sound had the same effect on the Havana diplomats and agents as the Russian helicopter in Syria. The alleged victims of the alleged attack in Havana even recognized the recording of crickets as the sound they had heard during the 'attacks.'

This was also the only reason why microwaves became a popular hypothesis as the cause of the 'Havana syndrome': Microwaves can give rise to acoustic phenomena in the inner ear. That nobody has described that sound as similar to the sound of crickets doesn't seem to bother fans of the idea.

I'll have to get back to this fairy tale again, but I have been preoccupied with the pandemic disaster in a neighboring country. However, I have finished reading Baloh and Bartholomew's https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52576972-havana-syndrome (GoodReads). Highly recommended!

By the way, the adversary may be the best word yet for what the embassy employees experienced ...

 

[dann]

WASHINGTON — A group of Canadian diplomats is accusing Canada's government of withholding information about what the diplomats say are three new cases of brain injury resulting from "Havana Syndrome" that have been identified in the past two years.
In a letter obtained by NBC News, the diplomats said "at least three additional cases were identified in 2019 and 2020" of the mysterious illness that also affected U.S. personnel in Cuba. In its most recent public update about new cases, in January 2019, Canada's government said "the last confirmed case of unusual health symptoms" had been in 2018.
(...)
In the letter, first reported by Canada's Global News, the diplomats recount being informed by Canada's government in February that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's national police force, is still investigating and "actively engaged" in discussions with U.S. and Cuban authorities, with plans to make a "technical visit" to Havana soon.
Canadian diplomats say their government is withholding info on more 'Havana Syndrome' brain injury cases (NBC News, April 29, 2021)

I guess the Mounties can cut down on travel expenses now that the 'attacks' have moved to Washington ...

 

[dann]

And mysterious 'attacks' Down Under, too!

Now reports have revealed there were further suspected attacks, including at least two on the US mainland.
In 2019, two top CIA spies – including one of the agency’s top five highest-ranking officials – travelled to Australia to meet intelligence counterparts.
Both the Americans were struck down with a mystery illness in their hotel rooms, sources told GQ.
Mysterious Havana Syndrome ‘energy attack’ near White House being investigated (News.com.au, April 30, 2021)

 

[dann]

Maybe Cuba shares something with U.S. senators, "diplomats and intelligence officials": concern about the lack of transparency:

[Democrat Jeanne] Shaheen said she is concerned that the "clampdown" on information about the attacks has led to leaks and that there is no way to know whether the media reports are correct.

"What more can be done to declassify this information, share it with members of Congress, that lets us better respond?" she asked. "After all, we have to fund operations, and there are a lot of personnel -- not a lot -- there are personnel who have been harmed and we need to make sure they get the care and benefits they need."
Lawmaker Raises Alarm over 'Directed Energy' Attacks on US Personnel (Military.com, April 29, 2021)

 

[Belz...]

I haven't followed this topic closely... what's the summary?

 

[dann]

It doesn't come as a surprise that RT loves the story about the Russian helicopter and the cases of diarrhea in Syria:
Pentagon probe into fears of Russian ‘energy weapon’ attacks on soldiers in Syria reportedly finds symptoms down to food poisoning (RT, April 29, 2021)
I can see why stories like this one may not encourage the State Department to become more transparent ...

 

[dann]

I haven't followed this topic closely... what's the summary?

There are several! The skeptical ones are here:

Havana Syndrome Skepticism (Skeptic, Dec. 7, 2020)
Havana Syndrome, Microwaves and Hearing RF (Skeptoid, Jan. 5, 2021)
Scientists Slam Microwave Theory For “Havana Syndrome” (BuzzFeedNews, Dec. 7, 2020)
Two older articles:
Sonic Weapons in Cuba (Skeptoid, Dec. 26, 2017)
Were The ‘Sonic Attacks’ On American Diplomats Just Sci-Fi? (SkepticalEnquirer, Feb. 5, 2019)

Notice that the first article now has a postscript from this month: The Biden CIA Is Re-Examining ‘Havana Syndrome’ - Update April 5, 2021

 

[dann]

These recent articles are mentioned in the postscript to the article in Skeptic:

C.I.A. to Expand Inquiry Into Mysterious Health Episodes Overseas. (NYT, March 4, 2021)
Will US diplomats finally return to Havana, after a rash of mystery injuries? (CNN, Feb. 19, 2021)

The CNN article is very interesting in as far as it makes clear what the lack of transparency is all about:

The State Department report, which was obtained by the National Security Archive research institute though a Freedom of Information Act request, concludes that the US government's response and investigation into the so-called Havana Syndrome may have been botched from the beginning.
"You see chaos, lack of organization, you see excessive secrecy, as the authors of the report put it, all of which compromised an initial investigation assessment of what was going on," said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst with the National Security Archive.
Part of the secrecy surrounding the incidents likely had to do with the fact that CIA officers working under diplomatic cover were among the first US officials impacted by the incidents and the first to depart Havana.
According to a timeline in the State Department report, the CIA informed the State Department in September 2017 of "its decision to withdraw its personnel from Havana for the foreseeable future."
The line is a rare public admission of a CIA station operating at a US Embassy, Kornbluh said.
Will US diplomats finally return to Havana, after a rash of mystery injuries? (CNN, Feb. 19, 2021)

It is also interesting that the alleged victims of the alleged attack in Havana don't seem to hold the Cubans responsible at all! See the two last paragraphs of the article.
That was not the impression you got when Trump's State Department was running the show.


I don't know how much this video has to do with the NYT article:

 

[Checkmite]

You seem to be laboring under some misconceptions. I suggest you read the study itself, where you will find details that seem to be missing in your “analysis.”

On this particular topic, Dann has an unfortunate habit of judging entire studies based on headlines about them, or single-sentence quotes reported in news articles. If a study sounds from the popular news coverage like it doesn't fully support his own conclusions on the subject, he will assume it is flawed, imagine what those flaws could be, and then cite those imagined flaws when dismissing it. It's rather unfortunate, because elsewhere he has indicated conscious awareness of the fact that popular reporting can completely obscure the actual findings and conclusions of a study or report, even to the point of presenting it as supporting a conclusion opposite to that which it actually supports.

For instance, an earlier report by the National Academy of Sciences wasn't outright dismissive of the possibility that there had been some kind of weaponized effect, and said so. Naturally this was reported in the press as the NAS saying that a weapon had been used. Since even entertaining the idea is enough to discredit the report in Dann's opinion, that meant the report was right out; Dann didn't know at the time what the NAS actually was, but he assumed from the name that it was some kind of governmental organization and so dismissed the report in a post here as agenda-driven charlatanry by Trump appointees, despite the fact that the NAS isn't a government or political organization and all of the paper's authors had been admitted to the academy prior to the time period of the Trump administration. When the error of this assumption was pointed out to him, he proceeded to attack the competence of the kinds of people appointed to the NAS, despite again not really understanding that process.

 

[dann]

You still haven't come up with anything from the NAS report itself. You have presented your very obvious awe and deference for the institution while ignoring who gave the researchers both the assignment and the (very limited) access to the facts of the case. As I wrote at the time:

So you have nothing whatsoever to say about the quotations from the report itself. All you have come up with is your appeal to authority. What you don't seem to understand is that your awe of the organization behind a report is not an argument for the validity of that report.

I don't know about the organization behind the report and I don't care about that organization. You are free to admire it as much as you want. I am only interested in what they say in that report.
You, apparently, are not! Otherwise, you might have used the link I provided you with, not to the organization, but to the report issued by that organization, but the report doesn't seem to interest you at all.

You still don't seem to have any interest in what the report contains, including the very obvious bias presented at the beginning to appeal to the State Department, which ordered it. That newspapers and other media latched on to this was not a coincidence. It was intended.

That the media also didn't report that the 'study' didn't leave out other explanations was a given. That was what the media was intended to do. The media did what the media was supposed to do.

That this in your opinion makes the report objective and valid is due to the confirmation of your bias, which it served as well.

 

[Checkmite]

You still don't seem to have any interest in what the report contains, including the very obvious bias presented at the beginning to appeal to the State Department, which ordered it. That newspapers and other media latched on to this was not a coincidence. It was intended.

That the media also didn't report that the 'study' didn't leave out other explanations was a given. That was what the media was intended to do. The media did what the media was supposed to do.

That this in your opinion makes the report objective and valid is due to the confirmation of your bias, which it served as well.

No. I don't engage with the silliness quoted above because it is rapacious conspiracy-mongering, again motivated by your personal prejudice against the report because of its failure to merely summarily rule out an explanation you think is worthy of ridicule - even when the report explicitly does not positively support that conclusion as the ultimate explanation.

An acknowledgment in the opening paragraphs that the government who requested the report is concerned about some type of weaponization, and that the existence of those concerns is reasonable and makes the matter worthy of investigation, isn't a signal of "bias", it's just a neutral statement of the reason why the report exists - something that most reports of this nature tend to contain. You only want it to be bias because it is the opposite of pre-emptively mocking and deriding those concerns, which you personally feel is what they deserve.

This bad-faith mischaracterization because a thing disagrees with you is, again an unfortunate habit of yours - demonstrated once again by you mischaracterizing my simply correcting you that the NAS isn't a governmental or politically-appointed body as "very obvious awe and deference", as if someone who recognized your lack of factual accuracy but was indifferent to the organization would have let your errors and the assumptions you built on them stand without correcting them.

 

[dann]

You have a weird idea of what constitutes "a neutral statement," but I'll return to that later.
For now just this: NAS Report on ‘Havana Syndrome’ Mired in Controversy (Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 45, #2, March April 2021)

 

[dann]

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/29/poli...directed-energy-attack-white-house/index.html

The Cuban newspaper Granma about the CNN article: U.S. deception syndrome to discredit adversaries (Granma.cu, May 14, 2021)

 

[Checkmite]

US investigates second suspected case of mystery 'syndrome' near White House

Multiple sources tell CNN that the episodes affected two officials on the National Security Council in November 2020, one the day after the presidential election and one several weeks later. The cases are consistent with an inexplicable constellation of sensory experiences and physical symptoms that have sickened more than 100 US diplomats, spies and troops around the globe and have come to be known as "Havana Syndrome."

The intelligence community still isn't sure who is causing the strange array of nervous system symptoms, or if they can be definitively termed "attacks." Even the technology that might cause such an inconsistent set of symptoms is a matter of debate.

The first incident, previously reported by CNN, occurred after the 2020 election as the NSC official was attempting to pass through an unstaffed gate near the Ellipse, according to a source with direct knowledge of the incident. That person suffered only mild symptoms after the encounter, including headaches and sleeplessness, all of which went away after a week.

The second official, whose case has not been previously reported, was struck weeks later near an entrance to the White House grounds, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. The second official suffered more serious symptoms and was ill enough to seek immediate medical treatment, the sources said.

For five years now, investigators have struggled to explain the strange experiences reported by US diplomats and other government workers in Cuba, Russia, China and elsewhere -- episodes that in some cases have led to chronic headaches and brain injuries. Victims have reported experiencing sudden vertigo, headaches and head pressure, sometimes accompanying by a "piercing directional noise." Some reported being able to escape the symptoms simply by moving to another room -- and step back into them by returning to their original position.

The number of suspected cases worldwide is increasing, according to a recent statement from the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee. There have been more than 130 cases worldwide over the past five years, according to the New York Times, which reported at least one episode taking place overseas in the last two weeks.

Under pressure from lawmakers and victims, the Biden administration has dramatically ramped up its efforts to "identify the cause of these incidents, determine attribution, increase collection efforts, and prevent" what the intelligence community now terms "anomalous health incidents," a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement on Tuesday.

CIA Director Bill Burns has begun to receive daily briefings on the matter, including some from victims of these strange encounters, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

But even a definitive diagnosis proving any one case is, in fact, "Havana Syndrome," has proven frustratingly difficult, officials say. Victims suffer a myriad of different symptoms both initially and over time, and scientists, engineers and medical experts are divided over whether all of the cases under investigation can be attributed to a single cause.

The government has successfully identified and fielded a blood test that can point to some markers that may indicate exposure, according to two US officials with direct knowledge of the matter. That test was among the diagnostic tools used in recent cases of intelligence officers who reported symptoms consistent with Havana Syndrome, and in the case of at least one of the White House victims, according to sources familiar with the matter. But the test alone is not enough to offer a clear diagnosis.

Multiple agencies are also trying to create or repurpose a type of sensor that could be used to detect anomalous activity and, theoretically, help establish that personnel are being hit, according to two current US officials and one former US official -- although sources cautioned such a tool would only be able to detect the activity, not protect from it.

A March report from the National Academy of Sciences found that "directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy" was the most likely cause of the strange set of symptoms -- so-called microwave energy -- but officials caution that even that isn't known for sure, and some academics have publicly dismissed the theory as unsupported.

"The whole 'microwave' theory is not because someone has any intelligence to suggest it, or someone saw it happen," said one source familiar with the intelligence on the matter. "This is what's been so maddening. It's based purely on symptoms."

"We have no hard leads -- just all circumstantial evidence," the official added. "And it's circumstantial evidence that could also be something completely different."

A satisfactorily balanced article about the issue overall.

It sounds to me like the government is taking a scientific approach to the question - having developed a blood test and looking into a sensor that gather data to show objectively whether something is actually happening to a person who is being "attacked".

 

[dann]

it raises an awful lot of questions?

Experts say they don't believe president Biden is in danger from such an attack while inside the White House. But what about when he ventures out?
Former CIA officer describes experience with mysterious illness (CNN on YouTube, May 18, 2021)

It is interesting that the experts seem to believe that the alleged microwave attacks can't go through walls. That wasn't the assumption in Havana!
It is also interesting to hear about "mysterious incidents just steps from the White House that sickened two national security officials. ... One of those two officials needed to see immediate medical treatment. ... These two officials were struck with those illnesses right here in one of the most heavily secured areas of the entire country." (Reporter pointing at White House lawn.)

So far, the Cuban authorities have been blamed for either being the perpetrators of the alleged attacks or not having done their utmost to protect U.S. embassy personnel in Havana, and now we hear that national security officials aren't even safe "in one of the most heavily secured areas of the entire country" of the USA.

Who is to be blamed for this lack of protection? I assume Cubans are not in charge of protecting the White House ...
And will national security officials from now on be withdrawn from the White House area since they don't seem to be safe there?
Will anybody who is "struck" with "illnesses" and ""sickened" anywhere in the world from now on be assumed to be victims of a mysterious, probably microwave, attack?

 

[dann]

US investigates second suspected case of mystery 'syndrome' near White House

Multiple sources tell CNN that the episodes affected two officials on the National Security Council in November 2020, one the day after the presidential election and one several weeks later. The cases are consistent with an inexplicable constellation of sensory experiences and physical symptoms[/I] that have sickened more than 100 US diplomats, spies and troops around the globe and have come to be known as "Havana Syndrome." The intelligence community still isn't sure who is causing the strange array of nervous system symptoms, or if they can be definitively termed "attacks." Even the technology that might cause such an inconsistent set of symptoms is a matter of debate. The first incident, previously reported by CNN, occurred after the 2020 election as the NSC official was attempting to pass through an unstaffed gate near the Ellipse, according to a source with direct knowledge of the incident. That person suffered only mild symptoms after the encounter, including headaches and sleeplessness, all of which went away after a week. The second official, whose case has not been previously reported, was struck weeks later near an entrance to the White House grounds, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. The second official suffered more serious symptoms and was ill enough to seek immediate medical treatment, the sources said. For five years now, investigators have struggled to explain the strange experiences reported by US diplomats and other government workers in Cuba, Russia, China and elsewhere -- episodes that in some cases have led to chronic headaches and brain injuries. Victims have reported experiencing sudden vertigo, headaches and head pressure, sometimes accompanying by a "piercing directional noise." Some reported being able to escape the symptoms simply by moving to another room -- and step back into them by returning to their original position. The number of suspected cases worldwide is increasing, according to a recent statement from the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee. There have been more than 130 cases worldwide over the past five years, according to the New York Times, which reported at least one episode taking place overseas in the last two weeks. Under pressure from lawmakers and victims, the Biden administration has dramatically ramped up its efforts to "identify the cause of these incidents, determine attribution, increase collection efforts, and prevent" what the intelligence community now terms "anomalous health incidents," a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement on Tuesday. CIA Director Bill Burns has begun to receive daily briefings on the matter, including some from victims of these strange encounters, according to two sources familiar with the matter. But even a definitive diagnosis proving any one case is, in fact, "Havana Syndrome," has proven frustratingly difficult, officials say. Victims suffer a myriad of different symptoms both initially and over time, and scientists, engineers and medical experts are divided over whether all of the cases under investigation can be attributed to a single cause. The government has successfully identified and fielded a blood test that can point to some markers that may indicate exposure, according to two US officials with direct knowledge of the matter. That test was among the diagnostic tools used in recent cases of intelligence officers who reported symptoms consistent with Havana Syndrome, and in the case of at least one of the White House victims, according to sources familiar with the matter. But the test alone is not enough to offer a clear diagnosis. Multiple agencies are also trying to create or repurpose a type of sensor that could be used to detect anomalous activity and, theoretically, help establish that personnel are being hit, according to two current US officials and one former US official -- although sources cautioned such a tool would only be able to detect the activity, not protect from it. A March report from the National Academy of Sciences found that "directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy" was the most likely cause of the strange set of symptoms -- so-called microwave energy -- but officials caution that even that isn't known for sure, and some academics have publicly dismissed the theory as unsupported. "The whole 'microwave' theory is not because someone has any intelligence to suggest it, or someone saw it happen," said one source familiar with the intelligence on the matter. "This is what's been so maddening. It's based purely on symptoms." "We have no hard leads -- just all circumstantial evidence," the official added. "And it's circumstantial evidence that could also be something completely different."

A satisfactorily balanced article about the issue overall. It sounds to me like the government is taking a scientific approach to the question - having developed a blood test and looking into a sensor that gather data to show objectively whether something is actually happening to a person who is being "attacked".

It sounds to me like the government just can't give up on the idea that attacks actually took place - based on nothing but so-called "circumstantial evidence that could also be something completely different," i.e. "an inconsistent set of symptoms." When I read that there "have been more than 130 cases worldwide over the past five years," it makes me think that it is time to treat this case the way I tackled the 'mysterious' deaths of U.S. American tourists in the Dominican Republic that had people worried a few years ago: How many spies, diplomats and embassy workers does the USA have stationed around the world? How many of them have come down with "an inconsistent set of symptoms" including headaches and sleeplessness? More than in the previous five years? More than you would expect? How many more? You would of course have to take into consideration that they have all heard about the 'Havana Syndrome' now. That would not have been the case six years ago. But unfortunately, those numbers are no doubt as top secret as is the new blood test mentioned in the quotation. I am beginning to suspect that the main purpose of this blood test could be to reassure hysterical CIA agents. It could be a way to demonstrate to them that their fears are taken seriously in order to calm them down: 'You can rest assured. There is nothing to worry about. Your blood test tells us that you have not been exposed to microwave weapons. Your headache is not a symptom of a sinister attack. Take two Advil and get back to work.'

 

[dann]

it raises an awful lot of questions?



It is interesting that the experts seem to believe that the alleged microwave attacks can't go through walls. That wasn't the assumption in Havana!
It is also interesting to hear about "mysterious incidents just steps from the White House that sickened two national security officials. ... One of those two officials needed to see immediate medical treatment. ... These two officials were struck with those illnesses right here in one of the most heavily secured areas of the entire country." (Reporter pointing at White House lawn.)

So far, the Cuban authorities have been blamed for either being the perpetrators of the alleged attacks or not having done their utmost to protect U.S. embassy personnel in Havana, and now we hear that national security officials aren't even safe "in one of the most heavily secured areas of the entire country" of the USA.

Who is to be blamed for this lack of protection? I assume Cubans are not in charge of protecting the White House ...
And will national security officials from now on be withdrawn from the White House area since they don't seem to be safe there?
Will anybody who is "struck" with "illnesses" and ""sickened" anywhere in the world from now on be assumed to be victims of a mysterious, probably microwave, attack?

Former members of the Trump administration will probably continue to call it the "Havana Syndrome" the same way they can't let go of the "China virus", but isn't it about time we start calling it the CIA virus?!
I am pretty sure that what the two national security officials came down with hasn't got much to do with the original version. From what we have been told so far, not a single cricket was involved in the Washington "encounters".
In order to distinguish between the different strains for the purpose of evidence-based medical science, it might be appropriate as well as expedient to assume that the two new cases came down with the White House variant.

 

[Checkmite]

it raises an awful lot of questions?

It is interesting that the experts seem to believe that the alleged microwave attacks can't go through walls. That wasn't the assumption in Havana!

More specifically, they seem to believe that the alleged microwave attacks can't go through The White House's walls. That wasn't the assumption in Havana, but then the White House isn't in Havana.

It is also interesting to hear about "mysterious incidents just steps from the White House that sickened two national security officials. ... One of those two officials needed to see immediate medical treatment. ... These two officials were struck with those illnesses right here in one of the most heavily secured areas of the entire country." (Reporter pointing at White House lawn.)

So far, the Cuban authorities have been blamed for either being the perpetrators of the alleged attacks or not having done their utmost to protect U.S. embassy personnel in Havana, and now we hear that national security officials aren't even safe "in one of the most heavily secured areas of the entire country" of the USA.

Well, no Cuba hasn't really been blamed. I think Donald Trump brayed something about "they know who it is" - "they" meaning Cuba - but you have to keep in mind that Trump was antagonistic towards American intelligence agencies for the entirety of his term, and the more confidently he asserted something, the more likely it was that the USIC's assessment was exactly the opposite. And I don't mean that rhetorically; I mean the fact that Trump said Cuba "knows who it is" is literally evidence that the intelligence community may not think that, and may even positively think that's not true.

 

[Checkmite]

Former members of the Trump administration will probably continue to call it the "Havana Syndrome" the same way they can't let go of the "China virus", but isn't it about time we start calling it the CIA virus?!

Why? The first victims were State Department diplomats.

 

[Checkmite]

It sounds to me like the government just can't give up on the idea that attacks actually took place - based on nothing but so-called "circumstantial evidence that could also be something completely different," i.e. "an inconsistent set of symptoms."

Well that's what happens when something can't positively be shown to be the case but can't be definitively ruled out, either. See, the US government does have a responsibility to protect its agents and diplomats and security personnel. It can't just laugh off a potential threat as silly or unsubstantiated just because the evidence isn't rock-solid, or because it could also be something completely different, and ignore the fact that critical employees are nevertheless winding up in the hospital, some of them with physical brain damage. If it IS a weapon, there's obviously an obligation to stop it; and if it is not a weapon, there's still an obligation find out just what the hell it is so they can stop it.

 

[dann]

it raises an awful lot of questions?

It is interesting that the experts seem to believe that the alleged microwave attacks can't go through walls. That wasn't the assumption in Havana!

More specifically, they seem to believe that the alleged microwave attacks can't go through The White House's walls. That wasn't the assumption in Havana, but then the White House isn't in Havana.

You are grasping at straws now! Are you telling us that The White House's walls are made of an alloy of vibranium and unobtainium? Tell us more about it! It is one of the few science-fiction ideas that we haven't heard in the context of the White House syndrome yet!

Well, no Cuba hasn't really been blamed. I think Donald Trump brayed something about "they know who it is" - "they" meaning Cuba - but you have to keep in mind that Trump was antagonistic towards American intelligence agencies for the entirety of his term, and the more confidently he asserted something, the more likely it was that the USIC's assessment was exactly the opposite. And I don't mean that rhetorically; I mean the fact that Trump said Cuba "knows who it is" is literally evidence that the intelligence community may not think that, and may even positively think that's not true.

You have to be cautious now! Your bias makes you forget what you have read in this thread, and it ought to be common knowledge by now. (Actually, it's the whole point of inventing the 'Havana syndrome': to put a stop to Cuba-US diplomatic relations. Cuba has to be blamed!)

Havana syndrome is a set of medical signs and symptoms reported by United States and Canadian embassy staff in Cuba dating back to late 2016 as well as subsequently in some other countries, including the United States.
In 2017, President Donald Trump accused Cuba of perpetrating unspecified attacks causing these symptoms.
Havana syndrome (Wikipedia)

"I do believe Cuba's responsible, I do believe that," Trump said in the Rose Garden.
Trump blames Cuba for mysterious attacks on US diplomats (CNN, Oct. 17, 2021)

A day after the F.B.I. ruled out a sonic attack, Marco Rubio, who despised Obama’s policy of restoring relations with his family’s homeland, gaveled open a hearing on Cuba before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As far as Rubio was concerned, the “attacks” were a given—as were the weapon and the assailant. “There is no way that someone could carry out these number of attacks, with that kind of technology, without the Cubans knowing about it,” he told Fox News. “They either did it, or they know who did it.”
The Real Story behind the Havana Embassy Mystery (VanityFair, Jan. 6, 2019)

Your attempt to make the "American intelligence agencies," and not Cuba, the victims of Trump is ridiculous. I guess your next fairy tale will be that Trump is the guy who attacked the two national security officials on the White House lawn.
Maybe they should consider making a suit out of that vibranium-unobtanium alloy. In the meantime, some people swear that tinfoil can do the trick.

 

[dann]

Former members of the Trump administration will probably continue to call it the "Havana Syndrome" the same way they can't let go of the "China virus", but isn't it about time we start calling it the CIA virus?!

Why? The first victims were State Department diplomats.

Why?! Obviously because the first alleged victims were CIA agents:

Between December 30, 2016, and February 9, 2017, at least three C.I.A. officers working under diplomatic cover in Cuba had reported troubling sensations that seemed to leave serious injuries. When the agency sent reinforcements to Havana, at least two of them were afflicted as well.

All the victims described being bombarded by waves of pressure in their heads. Unlike Lee, though, the C.I.A. officers said that they heard loud sounds, similar to cicadas, which seemed to follow them from one room to another. But when they opened an outside door the sounds abruptly stopped. Some of the victims said that it felt as if they were standing in an invisible beam of energy.
(...)
On December 30, 2016, Patient Zero in the Cuba crisis visited the Embassy health office. The patient, a C.I.A. officer who was operating under diplomatic cover, told a nurse that he had experienced strange sensations of sound and pressure while in his home, followed by painful headaches and dizziness.
The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome (NewYorker, Nov. 9, 2018)

 

[dann]

Well that's what happens when something can't positively be shown to be the case but can't be definitively ruled out, either. See, the US government does have a responsibility to protect its agents and diplomats and security personnel. It can't just laugh off a potential threat as silly or unsubstantiated just because the evidence isn't rock-solid, or because it could also be something completely different, and ignore the fact that critical employees are nevertheless winding up in the hospital, some of them with physical brain damage. If it IS a weapon, there's obviously an obligation to stop it; and if it is not a weapon, there's still an obligation find out just what the hell it is so they can stop it.

There is a big difference between laughing off "a potential threat" and making up a potential threat and encouraging your employees to believe in it. It is the way to spread mass hysteria. Like I said in post 823, it is possible that the "blood tests" are an attempt to alleviate the stress of the people who have come down with mass psychogenic illness thanks to the alleged sonic and/or microwave attacks:

I am beginning to suspect that the main purpose of this blood test could be to reassure hysterical CIA agents. It could be a way to demonstrate to them that their fears are taken seriously in order to calm them down:

'You can rest assured. There is nothing to worry about. Your blood test tells us that you have not been exposed to microwave weapons. Your headache is not a symptom of a sinister attack. Take two Advil and get back to work.'

If that is the case, then good riddance.

 

[Checkmite]

There is a big difference between laughing off "a potential threat" and making up a potential threat and encouraging your employees to believe in it. It is the way to spread mass hysteria.

Sure; but right now the theory that the government invented a fictional illness and then encouraged their diplomats in Cuba or elsewhere to believe in its existence in the hopes that they might eventually "come down with it" is simple conspiracy-mongering.

 

[dann]

Sure; but right now the theory that the government invented a fictional illness and then encouraged their diplomats in Cuba or elsewhere to believe in its existence in the hopes that they might eventually "come down with it" is simple conspiracy-mongering.

Let me elaborate a little:

What happened was that, due to the extremely annoying sound of Jamaican crickets in Havana, people working for the U.S. government, the CIA agents mentioned in my posts above, starting with the CIA agent referred to as patient Zero, became convinced that they were exposed to a sonic attack.

CIA agent Zero may have felt unwell for other reasons. We have no way to tell since we don't have access to his medical journals. But he appears to have been convinced that the alleged sonic attack was the cause of his ailment - whether of a physiological or psychogenic nature - and as he diligently spread the story to other agents, diplomats and embassy workers, including his Canadian neighbors, he created the first wave of psychogenic illness, the so-called Havana Syndrome.

Instead of considering this as the most logical explanation for what was going on, the government of the USA latched on to and encouraged the idea that embassy-affiliated U.S. personnel were being attacked either by the Cuban government, rogue elements of the Cuban state, or other adversaries, i.e. Russians or Chinese, working under Cuba's protection or at least approval. Blaming Cuba for sonic, chemical, microwave, whatever attacks was then used as an excuse for rolling back the diplomatic relations with Cuba.

In other words, the USA was not doing its utmost to protect its poor diplomats from harm, which was the fairy tale you presented. The USA has been the instigator of the whole thing from the very beginning, and the State Department is responsible for spreading the mass hysteria to the rest of the world in a second wave, and now it has apparently come home to roost in the shape of a third wave hitting the White House, which looks like a case of poetic justice to me.


ETA: Cases of psychogenic illness should probably not be dismissed as "a fictional illness." The threat from an imaginary attack was fictional.

 

[Checkmite]

What happened was that, due to the extremely annoying sound of Jamaican crickets in Havana, people working for the U.S. government, the CIA agents mentioned in my posts above, starting with the CIA agent referred to as patient Zero, became convinced that they were exposed to a sonic attack.

Doesn't quite work. Yes, I know that Cuban authorities, and you, leapt on the "crickets" explanation as if it solved every reported case of this effect; but there are problems with the explanation:

A single person, who traveled to Cuba apparently several months after the initial incidents, recorded a sound they thought might be involved and gave it to the news media. That turned out to be the sound that sounds like crickets.

We don't know if that sound is the sound the actual victims heard.

Only some of the alleged victims reported hearing any sounds at all. Others just reported feeling pressure, vibrations, or odd sensations while experiencing the other symptoms. Cricket sounds would not have caused those symptoms.

We don't know if the first person to show up at the hospital (i.e., "Patient Zero) with symptoms was one of the people who reported hearing sounds.

At least some of the alleged victims had been on post for several months, meaning they would've been exposed to and used to the sounds of the crickets well before the sudden onset of symptoms.

Instead of considering this as the most logical explanation for what was going on, the government of the USA latched on to and encouraged the idea that embassy-affiliated U.S. personnel were being attacked either by the Cuban government, rogue elements of the Cuban state, or other adversaries, i.e. Russians or Chinese, working under Cuba's protection or at least approval.

There wasn't enough evidence that what was going on was purely psychogenic for the government to leap to that conclusion as the definitive answer - and, for what it's worth, there still isn't.

 

[dann]

There ain't nobody here but us crickets

Doesn't quite work. Yes, I know that Cuban authorities, and you, leapt on the "crickets" explanation as if it solved every reported case of this effect; but there are problems with the explanation:

I don't know about the Cuban authorities, but I didn't leap on anything. You need to go back to square one, the OP, and to my original title of the thread before it was merged with another one: Alien Attack? Mass Hysteria? Conspiracy?
No crickets!

A single person, who traveled to Cuba apparently several months after the initial incidents, recorded a sound they thought might be involved and gave it to the news media. That turned out to be the sound that sounds like crickets.

We don't know if that sound is the sound the actual victims heard.

We do know that this was the sound the 'actual' victims heard because they said so!

Only some of the alleged victims reported hearing any sounds at all. Others just reported feeling pressure, vibrations, or odd sensations while experiencing the other symptoms. Cricket sounds would not have caused those symptoms.

Cricket sounds would not have caused any symptoms - except, maybe, sleeplessness while the crickets were still at it. But yes, their symptoms were all over the place (odd sensations?!!) and yet they were interpreted as having been caused by the same "sonic attacks" until researchers identified the recorded sound as that of crickets and were even able to reproduce it.

We don't know if the first person to show up at the hospital (i.e., "Patient Zero) with symptoms was one of the people who reported hearing sounds.

We do know that he was the one who was spreading the story. You are just as annoyed by those crickets as those people were, it seems, and as was everybody else when the tape that they considered to be proof positive of sonic attacks turned out to be nothing but crickets.

At least some of the alleged victims had been on post for several months, meaning they would've been exposed to and used to the sounds of the crickets well before the sudden onset of symptoms.

'That is just awful. We thought it was just animal sounds, and now you are telling us that we have been under attack?!!' (Based on the description, the sound of this particular breed of crickets may not be loud enough to cause tinnitus or brain damage, but it is loud and annoying enough to be something that you don't just get used to.) You are making up the story of "the sudden onset of symptoms." As with everything else, it was all over the place.
When you are dealing with sick building syndrome, you may also run into people who have lived years in a building with no problems until "the sudden onset of symptoms" when they hear the story. Much the same way that people who suffer from EHS are fine until somebody tells them that have been living close to a 5G mast. (Or maybe they are not fine, but the story about the masts convinces them that they are the cause of their suffering.)

There wasn't enough evidence that what was going on was purely psychogenic for the government to leap to that conclusion as the definitive answer - and, for what it's worth, there still isn't.

The government leapt to that conclusion because that conclusion served the government's purpose. Do I really have to remind you that the government was the Trump administration?! You know, the government that insisted on scientific integrity and that nobody would ever suspect of jumping to conclusions without enough evidence?
The evidence was always there, and many of the embassy employees were aware of it - and therefore never jumped to the conclusion that they were under attack.

You seem to be incapable of understanding that an (otherwise) "inexplicable constellation of sensory experiences and physical symptoms" is only inexplicable when you are doing your utmost to avoid the one explanation that actually fits.
Out of all the thousands of "US diplomats, spies and troops around the globe" who have reported sensory experiences and physical symptoms of one sort or another in more than four years, they have managed to find a small handful of people whose symptoms seem to be connected to brain damage or tinnitus. The rest have been dismissed and for the most part sent back to work. That is not a serious attempt to find evidence of anything. It's trawling for cases to prove your desired outcome even though not a single case seems to have been caused by an attack and might have a number of very natural causes. (And in the case of hearing loss, the onset had in some cases been diagnosed before people went to Cuba.)

 

[Checkmite]

I don't know about the Cuban authorities, but I didn't leap on anything. You need to go back to square one, the OP, and to my original title of the thread before it was merged with another one: Alien Attack? Mass Hysteria? Conspiracy?
No crickets!

Of course because the "cricket clip" hadn't even been reported at that point?

As soon as it was, and a scientist proposed that it might be a cricket, ever since that point you have been unwavering in your certainty that crickets explains the entire affair.

We do know that this was the sound the 'actual' victims heard because they said so!

"They" did not say so. I think it was reported that one person actually said so in so many words.

But here's the thing - if the crickets are in Havana, then everyone must have heard them, whether they experienced symptoms or not, and whether they heard any sounds that occurred to them as associated with the symptoms or not. So simply playing a recording months later and asking "did you hear anything like this" isn't really the smoking gun that one might necessarily believe it to be. It's essentially a leading question - the sound WILL be familiar to them, and they WILL remember hearing it around the time of the events., and it could alter their recollections. This is the same sort of suggestibility that results in mass hysteria.

We do know that he was the one who was spreading the story.

Well, no we don't. We know he felt something strange that caused him to seek medical attention, and to report the situation to his boss because he thought it was possible might be some kind of "attack". We don't know if he said anything to other individuals on his own accord. He may have, but we do not know.

And if he personally WAS "spreading the stories", you can't blame that on some kind of nefarious US government plot to deliberately infect its diplomatic corps in Havana with a "memetic" illness as an excuse to shut down the embassy.

'That is just awful. We thought it was just animal sounds, and now you are telling us that we have been under attack?!!' (Based on the description, the sound of this particular breed of crickets may not be loud enough to cause tinnitus or brain damage, but it is loud and annoying enough to be something that you don't just get used to.) You are making up the story of "the sudden onset of symptoms." As with everything else, it was all over the place.

Making up? Of course not. Whatever was happening to them, there was - in their own perceptions - a moment when the "attack" began on them personally, that hadn't been perceived to be happening to them prior to that point. That's what I mean by "sudden onset". As in, "suddenly, this evening at about 7:35PM, I started experiencing [symptom] for the first time".

Do I really have to remind you that the government was the Trump administration?! You know, the government that insisted on scientific integrity and that nobody would ever suspect of jumping to conclusions without enough evidence?

No, but apparently I have to remind you that the Trump administration was antagonistic to the US intelligence agencies, which were the ones initially reporting and investigating these incidents. I also have to remind you that the Trump administration moved the Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem without needing to invent a fake illness and convince embassy staff they were suffering from it as an excuse. And I have to remind you that Trump isn't the president anymore, but this problem hasn't gone away with him.

The evidence was always there, and many of the embassy employees were aware of it - and therefore never jumped to the conclusion that they were under attack.

What evidence? What are you talking about?

None of the initial reports say that any of the affected people at first believed they were just hearing crickets. If all they thought they were hearing was crickets, why would they even have reported it at the time? You're confabulating.

You seem to be incapable of understanding that an (otherwise) "inexplicable constellation of sensory experiences and physical symptoms" is only inexplicable when you are doing your utmost to avoid the one explanation that actually fits.
Out of all the thousands of "US diplomats, spies and troops around the globe" who have reported sensory experiences and physical symptoms of one sort or another in more than four years, they have managed to find a small handful of people whose symptoms seem to be connected to brain damage or tinnitus. The rest have been dismissed and for the most part sent back to work. That is not a serious attempt to find evidence of anything.

Of course only the people who have suffered actual brain damage and other lasting debilitating effects are still receiving care. The other ones stopped needing it once their symptoms went away. Of course they've been sent back to work. How does sending them back to work after they've recovered prove a lack of seriousness in looking for evidence? That's a non-sequitur.

 

[dann]

Of course because the "cricket clip" hadn't even been reported at that point?

Exactly! At first, we only had the descriptions of people's symptoms and their alleged experiences of the alleged attack. When the cricket recording was released by AP, people in this thread started analyzing it and found that the frequency of the recorded sound was similar to that of recordings of crickets.

As soon as it was, and a scientist proposed that it might be a cricket, ever since that point you have been unwavering in your certainty that crickets explains the entire affair.

Your memory is extremely bad. Not in general, I guess, but due to your bias: You remember what you want to remember and make your memories fit your bias. If future, I recommend that you spend a little more time looking at what actually happened in this thread. The truth of the matter is that the researchers analyzing the recording and coming up with the explanation that it was the sound of crickets, modulated by being reflected off of surfaces, a condition that they were able to reproduce, that happened much later than the consensus reached by most participants in this thread. And I had very little to do with that because my knowledge of acoustics is not exactly extensive.
And it was more than one scientist, by the way.

"They" did not say so. I think it was reported that one person actually said so in so many words.

I'm getting fed up with your "I think" argument. In spite of what you think, it was more than one person. They said so.

But here's the thing - if the crickets are in Havana, then everyone must have heard them, whether they experienced symptoms or not, and whether they heard any sounds that occurred to them as associated with the symptoms or not. So simply playing a recording months later and asking "did you hear anything like this" isn't really the smoking gun that one might necessarily believe it to be. It's essentially a leading question - the sound WILL be familiar to them, and they WILL remember hearing it around the time of the events., and it could alter their recollections. This is the same sort of suggestibility that results in mass hysteria.

Again your bias is the only argument, and you make up a narrative to go along with it:
They didn't later ask "did you hear anything like this"? Or 'is this sound familiar to you?' You are making yourself dumber than I think you are. It was obvious that the recording would be played to them in the context of the investigation of the alleged attacks.
If you can come up with anything suggesting that people believed that it was an investigation into the question 'Things I heard at one time or another in Cuba, apropos of nothing', feel free to do so.
People recognized it as the sound they heard when they were being 'attacked'.

Well, no we don't. We know he felt something strange that caused him to seek medical attention, and to report the situation to his boss because he thought it was possible might be some kind of "attack". We don't know if he said anything to other individuals on his own accord. He may have, but we do not know.

Yes, we do know, but your memory of the many things we have discussed in this very long thread is not very good. Agent Zero was the one who got the story started, not only among U.S. Americans. He was also the one who told the Canadians about the alleged attacks.
It is possible that you don't know, but we do!

And if he personally WAS "spreading the stories", you can't blame that on some kind of nefarious US government plot to deliberately infect its diplomatic corps in Havana with a "memetic" illness as an excuse to shut down the embassy.

I don't blame "some kind of nefarious US government plot." I just explained it to you a few posts ago: CIA agent Zero got the whole thing started, others joined in, and the US government used the story to cut back on diplomatic relations with Cuba. That this contributed to spreading the mass psychogenic illness to U.S. spies and agents and security officials all over the world, and now even on the White House lawn, was a side effect of the lie. Not surprising or unpredictable but also not deliberate.

Making up? Of course not. Whatever was happening to them, there was - in their own perceptions - a moment when the "attack" began on them personally, that hadn't been perceived to be happening to them prior to that point. That's what I mean by "sudden onset". As in, "suddenly, this evening at about 7:35PM, I started experiencing [symptom] for the first time".

Except that this is not the case. Some people probably began to experience 'symptoms' the moment they were told about the 'attacks'. Others, probably in particular the ones who were later analyzed as having actual physiological trauma caused by whatever, may have had symptoms of one kind or another for months before they heard the story that gave them a framework for reinterpreting those symptoms.

No, but apparently I have to remind you that the Trump administration was antagonistic to the US intelligence agencies, which were the ones initially reporting and investigating these incidents. I also have to remind you that the Trump administration moved the Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem without needing to invent a fake illness and convince embassy staff they were suffering from it as an excuse. And I have to remind you that Trump isn't the president anymore, but this problem hasn't gone away with him.

No, you don't have to remind me. Trump is antagonistic to anybody who doesn't agree with his current intentions. In the case of the CIA agents and their stories about sonic attacks, you haven't heard him utter the slightest bit of mistrust of those agents. Then or now. They served his purpose, so he was on their side. Their story was to be believed not doubted.
I don't think Trump needed the excuse of sonic attacks to shut down diplomatic relations with Cuba. But the story was there, and his State Department found it convenient to use it.

What evidence? What are you talking about?

I am talking about other embassy workers being well-aware that their co-workers were caught up in a wave of hysteria. Some of them were calmed down by their Cuban janitors telling them that the sound they heard was nothing but crickets.
You need to go through this thread again because this has also been mentioned, more than once, with links to the sources.

None of the initial reports say that any of the affected people at first believed they were just hearing crickets. If all they thought they were hearing was crickets, why would they even have reported it at the time? You're confabulating.

It is grotesque that you accuse me of confabulation.
No, the affected people obviously didn't think they were hearing crickets. They either came down with a bad case of mass psychogenic illness, or they had had symptoms for a while, which they now interpreted in the context of the new narrative: sonic attacks!
The reports about people who were aware what was going on came later as a result of investigative journalism. If it weren't for critical journalists, we would also never have heard about CIA agent Zero.

Of course only the people who have suffered actual brain damage and other lasting debilitating effects are still receiving care. The other ones stopped needing it once their symptoms went away. Of course they've been sent back to work. How does sending them back to work after they've recovered prove a lack of seriousness in looking for evidence? That's a non-sequitur.

I have no idea if they still receive care or not. Some of them aren't happy with the way they have been treated by the government, but that is irrelevant. What is supposed to be your point about them receiving care, evidence-wise?!
You don't seem to get the point at all, and I think that you deliberately don't get it:
Many of those people with symptoms were dismissed because nothing was wrong with them, and so they were no longer interesting, victims of nothing but mass hysteria as they were. When you sift through a whole bunch of people with symptoms and eliminate those who have symptoms even though nothing is wrong with them from your study, the ones that are left aren't really representative of anything, least of all of an attack unless you find something akin to bullet holes and preferably also to the smoking gun they came from.

 

[dann]

Some agencies have put out a call in recent months for personnel to report any symptoms that might correspond with “Havana syndrome,” which one official said may have led to more reporting of cases rather than an increase of actual incidents.
Biden team looking for patterns in investigation of ‘Havana syndrome’ cases (News&Observer, May 7, 2021)

This initiative will encourage more people to think of whatever kind of symptoms they may have had as the 'Havana syndrome': sleeplessness, headaches, crickets ...

 

[dann]

And maybe we should add two-year-olds crying to the list of symptoms of the syndrome. Anything goes, it seems:

In one 2019 case, an officer who was serving overseas says he had severe nausea and headaches after pulling into an intersection, and his 2-year-old son who was in the backseat started crying. After the officer left the intersection, he felt better and his son stopped crying.
What Is 'Havana Syndrome'? More Than 100 US Personnel Sickened By Mysterious Illness (Health, May 19, 2021)

 

[Checkmite]

Exactly! At first, we only had the descriptions of people's symptoms and their alleged experiences of the alleged attack. When the cricket recording was released by AP, people in this thread started analyzing it and found that the frequency of the recorded sound was similar to that of recordings of crickets.

Exactly; and ever since then, your answer to the entire situation, all the cases, whether they heard noise or not, whether they happened in Havana or not, is "they all happened because one guy heard crickets!", a happenstance event which then became the impetus for a super-top-secret US government project to create and promote a memetic illness and infect its diplomatic corps with said illness in order to provide a pretext to reduce embassy staff somewhat in Cuba.

Your memory is extremely bad. Not in general, I guess, but due to your bias: You remember what you want to remember and make your memories fit your bias. If future, I recommend that you spend a little more time looking at what actually happened in this thread. The truth of the matter is that the researchers analyzing the recording and coming up with the explanation that it was the sound of crickets, modulated by being reflected off of surfaces, a condition that they were able to reproduce, that happened much later than the consensus reached by most participants in this thread. And I had very little to do with that because my knowledge of acoustics is not exactly extensive.
And it was more than one scientist, by the way.

I'm getting fed up with your "I think" argument. In spite of what you think, it was more than one person. They said so.

Nah. Somebody said that some of them did, waffled about it, and ended up only directly quoting ONE person. Not too definitive.

But ever since that analysis was released, with you it's basically been "that's what they all heard, and the only thing they all heard", because one guy said "that's the sound" after the AP played a recording of the reported sound to him several months after the fact.

Again your bias is the only argument, and you make up a narrative to go along with it:
They didn't later ask "did you hear anything like this"? Or 'is this sound familiar to you?' You are making yourself dumber than I think you are. It was obvious that the recording would be played to them in the context of the investigation of the alleged attacks.

I don't think that's "obvious" at all. The actual chain of events is, one person several months after the alleged "attacks" released a recording to the AP who published it on the internet, after taking it to some (anonymous) sources who were allegedly among the ostensible "victims" and asking them if that was the sound they had heard, with only one providing a quotable response apparently. Then some scientists independently studied the AP-published sound clip and released an analysis that it sounded very similar to a certain species of cricket.

Yes, we do know, but your memory of the many things we have discussed in this very long thread is not very good. Agent Zero was the one who got the story started, not only among U.S. Americans. He was also the one who told the Canadians about the alleged attacks.

I don't blame "some kind of nefarious US government plot." I just explained it to you a few posts ago: CIA agent Zero got the whole thing started, others joined in, and the US government used the story to cut back on diplomatic relations with Cuba. That this contributed to spreading the mass psychogenic illness to U.S. spies and agents and security officials all over the world, and now even on the White House lawn, was a side effect of the lie. Not surprising or unpredictable but also not deliberate.

Exactly. You think it was a "lie"; i.e., the US government nefariously maintaining that its diplomats absolutely definitely were ATTACKED! by some kind of enemy ray-gun, positively knowing all the while that that is in fact absolutely definitely not true and it was in fact just one guy being attacked by annoying cricket-song, in order to justify partially reducing Havana embassy staff. They did this because Trump hates Cuba because he's Trump, which makes sense, but also per recent developments the Biden Administration is 100% on-board with maintaining this lie because he hates Cuba too I guess.

Except that this is not the case. Some people probably began to experience 'symptoms' the moment they were told about the 'attacks'. Others, probably in particular the ones who were later analyzed as having actual physiological trauma caused by whatever, may have had symptoms of one kind or another for months before they heard the story that gave them a framework for reinterpreting those symptoms.

You can't start a rebuttal with something strong like "that's not true" when the next sentence starts with something like "what probably happened..."; especially not in a thread where one of your previous complaints was "...your bias is the only argument, and you make up a narrative to go along with it". Talk to the mirror, my friend.

If there's any actual value this thread has, it has been to introduce me to your admirable creative-writing skills. Any simple prompt and you're off to the races, building whole entire worlds like a typographical Bob Ross.

No, you don't have to remind me. Trump is antagonistic to anybody who doesn't agree with his current intentions. In the case of the CIA agents and their stories about sonic attacks, you haven't heard him utter the slightest bit of mistrust of those agents. Then or now. They served his purpose, so he was on their side. Their story was to be believed not doubted.

Well except for that whole part about how only Trump's own statements are the only place you'll find the government positively contending there were attacks at all, while from day one the actual intelligence and State officials have been releasing waffling statements along the lines of "Well, it COULD have been an attack....but it also might not have been? Or some might have been attacks and others not? We don't know. They all have different symptoms. It could be a bunch of different things. It's so weird! We need to study this more."

I am talking about other embassy workers being well-aware that their co-workers were caught up in a wave of hysteria. Some of them were calmed down by their Cuban janitors telling them that the sound they heard was nothing but crickets.
You need to go through this thread again because this has also been mentioned, more than once, with links to the sources.

I've looked for these multiple "links" you've mentioned but I haven't found anything in my thread-skimming. It sounds made up, but if you want to take a crack at surfacing these links again I will give them a look and tell you what I think.

It is grotesque that you accuse me of confabulation.

LOL no it isn't "grotesque", come on. You've been assailing me practically every other post with insinuations that I'm deliberately lying about this or that, like not remembering some link you say you posted twenty years ago or something in this ancient damned thread, and haven't gone all "lo, what calumniation!" over it.

No, the affected people obviously didn't think they were hearing crickets. They either came down with a bad case of mass psychogenic illness, or they had had symptoms for a while, which they now interpreted in the context of the new narrative: sonic attacks!

The new "narrative" spread by the nefarious government memetic plot?

You don't seem to get the point at all, and I think that you deliberately don't get it:

See what I mean?

But 'pon my word, thou slanderous rapscallion!

Many of those people with symptoms were dismissed because nothing was wrong with them, and so they were no longer interesting, victims of nothing but mass hysteria as they were. When you sift through a whole bunch of people with symptoms and eliminate those who have symptoms even though nothing is wrong with them from your study, the ones that are left aren't really representative of anything, least of all of an attack unless you find something akin to bullet holes and preferably also to the smoking gun they came from.

I think again you're overgeneralizing here; but even so: when you eliminate the ones that "nothing is wrong with", you're still left with people that something is wrong with, and you have to find out what that thing is, whether "that thing" is an "ATTACK!" or something completely different.

Because - get this - what if.....WHAT IF! those handful of people who have brain injuries really were "attacked", and WHAT IF their actual attacks are what set off the wave of sympathetic MPI?

 

[dann]

Exactly; and ever since then, your answer to the entire situation, all the cases, whether they heard noise or not, whether they happened in Havana or not, is "they all happened because one guy heard crickets!", a happenstance event which then became the impetus for a super-top-secret US government project to create and promote a memetic illness and infect its diplomatic corps with said illness in order to provide a pretext to reduce embassy staff somewhat in Cuba.

I am fed up with your hyperboles and lies. You are the one who now reduces the many people who heard crickets and believed that they were the victims of a sonic attack it to one guy only! There always were several. That is the whole point of calling the first one Patient Zero.
And the embassy staff wasn't merely 'reduced somewhat':

The State Department announced Friday it will permanently maintain a skeletal staff at the U.S. embassy in Cuba citing the “health attacks” on its personnel that have baffled experts to this day.
(...)
The downsizing of the embassy staff along with a travel warning have had significant effects on Cuba's economy and for its citizens. With fewer employees on hand, the U.S. Embassy in Havana halted visa processing, forcing Cubans who wish to visit the United States to seek visas through U.S. embassies in other countries. The U.S. is also expected to fall far short of granting the 20,000 immigrant visas to Cubans that have been allotted annually for decades.
U.S. decision to permanently reduce Cuba embassy staff draws swift reaction (NBC News, March 2, 2018)

Nah. Somebody said that some of them did, waffled about it, and ended up only directly quoting ONE person. Not too definitive.

But ever since that analysis was released, with you it's basically been "that's what they all heard, and the only thing they all heard", because one guy said "that's the sound" after the AP played a recording of the reported sound to him several months after the fact.

So if 'somebody' quoted only one person, this means that it happened to only one person. Yeah, right! Instead of repeating your lies, it's high time you come up with quotations that document your claims! Where are they? Where did I say that "that's what they all heard, and the only thing they all heard""? What's the point of your quotation marks?! Link and quotation! And a quotation where only one guy said "that's the sound." Link and quotation!

I don't have the time to deal with the rest of your story for now. I'll be back.