Merged US may close Cuba Embassy over 'health attacks'

[Planigale]

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.

Early in the thread I posted links to descriptions of chronic pesticide toxicity (in farmers) very similar to fumigation chemicals. The description is very similar. The most likely physical explanation I think is the US was concerned about bugs and frequently fumigated. I think a non-physical explanation.g. 'hysteria' is not mutually exclusive. I think both occurred. I think the self inflicted (by US) nature of the injuries has led to a blame culture where some mysterious 'other' is to blame.

 

[dann]

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.

Early in the thread I posted links to descriptions of chronic pesticide toxicity (in farmers) very similar to fumigation chemicals. The description is very similar. The most likely physical explanation I think is the US was concerned about bugs and frequently fumigated.

At the time, everybody was concerned about the zika virus, and we know that the embassy asked for extra fumigations, which was administered by Cubans not by the USA. I have also mentioned another reason why I wouldn't rule out the possibility that American spies/diplomats/embassy workers might have been harmed by fumigation when Cubans apparently weren't: They probably all lived in air-conditioned houses or (hotel) rooms, well-insulated because you don't want to let the cool air go to waste, unlike the vast majority of Cubans, who live in well-ventilated houses, often with shutters instead of windows.
(It's one of the things the pandemic has taught us: the importance of ventilation!)

I think a non-physical explanation.g. 'hysteria' is not mutually exclusive.

Neither do I. In fact, there is no other way to explain the many people who complained about symptoms but had no detectable physiological damages.

I think both occurred. I think the self inflicted (by US) nature of the injuries has led to a blame culture where some mysterious 'other' is to blame.

I doubt that the real damage to brains and hearing was anything other than natural and age-related. One problem with Steen's idea, "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," is that we have no way of knowing the size of the "lot larger group". Are the forty 'diplomats', all things considered (age, for instance), what one might expect or not?
It may come out at some point as a result of the current investigations, but since this is all top secret, we may never know.

 

[xjx388]

Normal age-related brain changes don’t look like the scans of the affected diplomats, which is obvious when you consider that the U Penn study compared the their scans to scans of people of the same age. The U Penn researchers noted damage consistent with the symptoms reported.

Something caused the damage, the question is what.

 

[dann]

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.

You are making this stuff up again: You don't know that there was "only one providing a quotable response." It is obfuscation. You appear to have no idea what journalism is. No matter how many people are interviewed for an article, a journalist doesn't quote each and everyone. You draw the conclusion that only one came up with a quotable response. And you appear to do so without even looking it up. Why don't you present us with quotations from the article you are allegedly referring to?!
And the scientists released a meticulous analysis concluding that it was the sound of "a certain species of cricket" modulated by being bounced back by surfaces like walls.

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.

No, not at all "positively knowing all the while." You are lying again. Go back and read the bloody thread!!! Nobody in the thread knew that 'positively all the while', but unlike you some of us were trying to get hold of the facts, which were released bit by bit. One of those facts was the cricket tape. Other facts came in the form of articles by investigative journalists.
And little by little, it became more and more apparent what had actually happened. The only one who has stuck to his bias throughout this thread is you, Checkmite, except when you gave up for a short while and pretended that you only kept it up as a contribution to keep the discussion going.

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.

I can start a rebuttal any way I want. I mentioned that your absurd accusations were based on nothing but your bias and then went on to explain what might have been the case.
In this thread, you are the one who has come up with absurd stories with no documentation whatsoever, and I am the one who has read whole books to refute those stories. And that is still the case.
And you never come up with evidence and documentation to support your claims when I ask you to do so.


I'll continue with the rest of your post when I have a little more time.

 

[dann]

Normal age-related brain changes don’t look like the scans of the affected diplomats, which is obvious when you consider that the U Penn study compared the their scans to scans of people of the same age. The U Penn researchers noted damage consistent with the symptoms reported.

Your argument is absurd! If you compare the brain of a 60-year-old Alzheimer patient with the brain of somebody without any dementia, there is obviously going to be differences. 60-year-old Alzheimer patients obviously have abnormal age-related brain changes when compared to people of the age.

Something caused the damage, the question is what.

I thought you had decided that the cause was microwave attacks.

 

[xjx388]

Your argument is absurd! If you compare the brain of a 60-year-old Alzheimer patient with the brain of somebody without any dementia, there is obviously going to be differences. 60-year-old Alzheimer patients obviously have abnormal age-related brain changes when compared to people of the age.

Errr…yeah. There’s normal age related damage and then there’s damage caused by injury or disease process. So it seems my argument is not absurd. Especially when you consider we aren’t talking about 60+ year olds; the agents and diplomats are mostly in their 30’s with no history of previous injury or disease process. There is no normal age-related aging process that would account for the kinds of damage found in the affected people.

The argument that this all boils down to: cricket sounds + hysteria + normal age-related damage simply does not fit the evidence.

I thought you had decided that the cause was microwave attacks.

I’m in no position to decide anything. None of us are. We don’t have all the facts. However, I will take the analysis by a few respected institutions over non-scientists on the interwebs every day.

If I’ve decided anything, it’s that there was brain damage. I don’t know what caused it.

 

[dann]

So let's take a real live U.S. American scientist, as if there haven't already been plenty of those.
Pretending that the many scientists arguing against the idea of sonic or microwave attacks are "non-scientists on the interwebs" is typical of your level of 'argumentation':

At least 130 cases across the government are now under investigation, up from several dozen last year, according to a U.S. defense official who was not authorized to discuss details publicly.
(...)
Dr. Robert Baloh of the University of California, Los Angeles, argued that scans of healthy people’s brains sometimes display mini-strokes and that any possible weapon would be too large or require too much power to be deployed without detection.
Baloh said the growing number of cases considered directed energy attacks is actually linked to “mass psychogenic illness,” in which people learning of others with symptoms begin to feel sick themselves.
“Many people are hearing about it and that’s how it gets propagated,” Baloh said.
Growing mystery of suspected energy attacks draws US concern] (WP, May 23, 2021)

 

[xjx388]

So let's take a real live U.S. American scientist, as if there haven't already been plenty of those.
Pretending that the many scientists arguing against the idea of sonic or microwave attacks are "non-scientists on the interwebs" is typical of your level of 'argumentation':

Yes, I'm aware of the scientists who disagree that it could have been a microwave weapon of some sort. Science is doing what science does. Eventually, all the evidence will point in a certain direction.

What some non-scientists on the interwebs are doing is making definitive pronouncements that it was crickets+hysteria+normal age-related brain damage. No such conclusion can be reached yet.

There are good scientists on both sides of this issue. I'm content to wait and see before reaching my own conclusions. My own non-scientific opinion, based on what I have read, is that there is documented brain damage in younger people who have not had TBI or a history of disease that would cause brain damage. Something caused that and I know crickets can't cause it, hysteria can't cause it and it doesn't happen due to normal age-related brain damage. I disagree with Dr. Baloh that it might be "mini-strokes," simply because I find it unlikely that all these people assigned to posts with the US Government (not just Havana, but all over the world) suffered mini-strokes when most people their age have not. Additionally, the documented brain damage is not the kind damage seen from mini-strokes -the UPenn study was very specific about this.

Now, maybe "microwave weapons" is a bit outlandish, but if an organization like the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine thinks an energy weapon of some kind is plausible, I see no reason to question that on it's face.

 

[dann]

Yes, I'm aware of the scientists who disagree that it could have been a microwave weapon of some sort. Science is doing what science does. Eventually, all the evidence will point in a certain direction.

And yet you jumped to first one conclusion and then another, without having looked into this case at all, and now you pretend to be waiting for the correct solution, the consensus reached by science. All the evidence pointed in a certain direction from the beginning, and the discovery that crickets were responsible for the sound heard by the embassy employees made it even more obvious, but U.S. American scientists engaged by Trump's state department were hellbent on calling it an attack even though not a single thing indicated that an attack had taken place, and still doesn't. Instead, they were led by paranoia and the sound of crickets.

What some non-scientists on the interwebs are doing is making definitive pronouncements that it was crickets+hysteria+normal age-related brain damage. No such conclusion can be reached yet.

Unlike the non-scientist xjx388, who immediately jumped to whatever conclusion dismissed the cricket hysteria in favor of the attack idea based on nothing but U.S. American paranoia. That you now pretend that no conclusion can be reached doesn't even give you the aura of mature contemplation that you are attempting to achieve. In Sweden at this point, it is what is now claimed by the 'scientists' who said that herd-immunit-by-infection was the best epidemiological strategy, that face masks don't work, and that we will only know the best way to tackle a pandemic like the current one many, many years from now. 'We don't know enough. We don't have enough data.' And at the same time, they are busy denying what they have said and done throughout the pandemic.
That you come up with the same strategy of pretending to be 'waiting for the science' doesn't surprise me.

There are good scientists on both sides of this issue. I'm content to wait and see before reaching my own conclusions.

The good-people-on-both-sides argument. Yeah, right. There are those who got paid to confirm or at least render probable the idea that the agents in Havana had been attacked by a sci-fi weapon and those who didn't. What has suddenly made you pretend to be "content to wait and see" is an interesting question. Could it be that the 'attacks' on the White House lawn has made the attack idea even more ridiculous than it already was?

My own non-scientific opinion, based on what I have read, is that there is documented brain damage in younger people who have not had TBI or a history of disease that would cause brain damage. Something caused that and I know crickets can't cause it, hysteria can't cause it and it doesn't happen due to normal age-related brain damage. I disagree with Dr. Baloh that it might be "mini-strokes," simply because I find it unlikely that all these people assigned to posts with the US Government (not just Havana, but all over the world) suffered mini-strokes when most people their age have not. Additionally, the documented brain damage is not the kind damage seen from mini-strokes -the UPenn study was very specific about this.

You seem to be incapable of understanding that "all these people assigned to posts with the US Government (not just Havana, but all over the world)" did not suffer mini-strokes. The vast majority of "people assigned to posts with the US Government (not just Havana, but all over the world" suffered no such thing. Neither did the vast majority of national security officials visiting the White House. You can't pick the ones who did and compare them to "most people their age."
You could perform the same trick with any other group of people with any kind of damage: As soon as you have placed the damaged ones in a group of their own, it would be absurd to compare them with "most people their age."
'Well, here we have a group of ski tourists who broke their legs while on a ski holiday. Let's compare them with "most people their age." Nope, most people their age don't have broken legs. Let's blame the Cubans or the Russians!'
However, you could compare the whole group of people at a certain ski resort to similar groups of other people at other ski resorts to see if a similar percentage of them broke their legs in order to find out if a certain ski resort had a higher percentage of accidents than the average. That would be the scientific approach.
The UPenn study was flawed in so many ways that it is uninteresting what it was specific about.

Now, maybe "microwave weapons" is a bit outlandish, but if an organization like the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine thinks an energy weapon of some kind is plausible, I see no reason to question that on it's face.

No, you obviously don't.

 

[dann]

An official on the National Security Council (NSC) has for the first time described their harrowing experience with a suspected energy attack near the White House in November.
In an interview with The New Yorker, the unnamed official described “feeling completely fine” before “thinking I was going to die” and collapsing.
It follows recent revelations about two incidents on US soil, including one near the White House, in the final months of Donald Trump’s administration.
“It came on very suddenly,” the official said of the symptoms, including numbness and a loss of speech.
“I went from feeling completely fine to thinking, Oh, something’s not right, to being very, very worried and actually thinking I was going to die.”
He was able to order a Lyft to the hospital, where a receptionist asked if he was on drugs, before carrying out MRI scans and being sent home.
Trump NSC official reveals near-death experience with suspected Havana syndrome attack near White House (Independent, May 24, 2021)

The article is based on the much longer article in The New Yorker:

They have discovered that what began with several dozen spies and diplomats in Havana now encompasses more than a hundred and thirty possible cases, from Colombia to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to Austria, in addition to the United States and other countries. At least four of the cases involve Trump White House officials, two of whom say they had episodes on the Ellipse. The C.I.A. accounts for some fifty cases. The rest are mostly U.S. military and State Department personnel and their family members.
(...)
Their working hypothesis is that agents of the G.R.U., 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, and that these devices can cause serious harm to the people they target. Yet during the past four years U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to find any evidence to back up this theory, let alone sufficient proof to publicly accuse Russia.
(...)
In addition, profilers with the F.B.I.’s Behavioral Analysis Unit conducted assessments of the victims [of the alleged attacks in Havana]. The unit presented its findings to State Department officials, including John Sullivan, a Deputy Secretary and the head of a task force that the department had set up to look into the syndrome. The profilers’ assessment was that the victims were suffering from a mass psychogenic illness, a condition in which a group of people, often thinking that they have been exposed to something dangerous, begin to feel sick at the same time.
But, when a State Department official asked how many victims the profilers had interviewed, the unit explained that it hadn’t spoken to any of them directly. The unit’s conclusions were based on transcripts of previous interviews that the F.B.I. had done with the patients, and on “patient histories” compiled by the victims’ doctors, including neuropsychologists and other specialists, who had already ruled out the idea of a mass psychogenic illness: many of the victims didn’t know about the other people who were sick, and their bodies couldn’t have feigned some of the symptoms they were exhibiting.
Are U.S. Officials Under Silent Attack? (The New Yorker, May 24, 2021)

At the end of the article in The New Yorker, one of the victims of an alleged attack in London, Adrian Banks (not his real name) is mentioned again:

In 2020, Adrian Banks visited the doctors at the University of Pennsylvania, who found “suspected scar tissue and damage to the ear, possibly caused by significant sinus and ear infections.” More recently, Banks has been diagnosed as having hearing loss, and told a colleague, “I have ringing in my ear and pressure changes. I have migraines frequently. I get dizzy. I am still struggling.” Adams, too, is still experiencing health problems.

I guess that all we need to do to establish that he is the victim of a microwave attack is to compare him to a group of his peers. If they don't have scar tissue,"possibly caused by significant sinus and ear infections," we then have reason to assume that he is the victim of a hostile attack ...

 

[dann]

On CNBC, the sound waves are back!
U.S. diplomats 'deserve better' in the fight against sound wave attacks, urges national security expert (CNBC, May 19, 2021)
I hope that the crickets will get a comeback, too, but the article doesn't mention them.

 

[dann]

In their list of 11 requests to the administration, the staffers ask that evaluations and medical care for all newly or potentially injured workers be centralized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where some recent injuries have been treated. In the first years after the incidents arose, the government sent workers to University of Miami and then to University of Pennsylvania, creating an inconsistent hodgepodge of treatments and testing regimens, and in recent years workers have continued to say they have to fight to get treated at Walter Reed.
(...)
They also want the State Department to work more closely with the Pentagon and other agencies on developing "identification devices" for potential incidents, and to provide affected employees with some type of formal acknowledgement of their injuries, such as a letter or award from the secretary.
Diplomats send letter to State Dept. leaders saying 'Havana Syndrome' sufferers not getting proper care (NBC News, May 26, 2021)

... we have been disheartened to learn and experience that staff within the Department continue to 1) Deny employees and injured family members access to proper medical evaluation and treatment 2) Reject scientific evidence regarding the injuries and treatment needs and 3) Invalidate our injuries and experiences. Our counterparts in the defense and intelligence community have had a different level and frequency of engagement.
25 May letter to Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon

Affected employees' recommendations for U.S. government

White House Pushed On Mysterious "Havana Syndrome" Affecting CIA & Other Americans Abroad (Forbes, May 7, 2021)

Former CIA officer describes experience with mysterious illness (CNN, May 18, 2021)

Diplomats Urge State Dept To Provide Care For 'Havana Syndrome' Sufferers (MSNBC, May 26, 2021)


I think that the idea of "developing "identification devices"" is the best one yet. Each and every diplomat, spy, security official etc. should be provided with one. It would be especially interesting to know what exactly those devices are supposed to identify ...

 

[dann]

This will help spread the hysteria to all of the U.S. military - if it didn't already do so:

The State Department issued a similar memo to staff earlier this month asking them to immediately report symptoms, according to a copy obtained by CNN.
(...)
It is expected that the memo will describe a series of symptoms that have occurred in existing cases and ask military and civilian personnel to report if they have experienced similar symptoms, the senior official said. The draft memo will describe "the kinds of physical experiences" government personnel have already reported in previous cases.
Pentagon considering telling troops to report suspected 'Havana Syndrome' incidents (CNN, May 26, 2021)

And if anybody doesn't remember "the kinds of physical experiences" that should make you suspect that you are the victim of an attack by super-sonic and/or microwave weapons, the CNN article lists the symptoms:

Victims have reported a varying set of symptoms and physical sensations, including sudden vertigo, nausea, headaches and head pressure, sometimes accompanied by a "piercing directional noise."

So don't wait until it's too late!
If you have a headache, feel nauseous or dizzy, you may be under attack!

 

[xjx388]

Let's explore the idea of mass psychogenic illness as an explanation. I think that it's a real phenomenon that can happen in an environment where there is high anxiety/stress and where there is a trigger. I don't think it can be completely ruled out here and there may be an element of MPI at play.

However, it can't be the full explanation because of two big factors:

1)It has happened in far-flung locations with people who don't know each other, whereas most MPI incidents occur in close groups of people all in the same place around the same timeframe.

2)MPI incidents don't have organic causes or cause detectable damage to organs. In these cases we have documented damage to the brain that align with reported symptoms.

Now let's explore pesticides. Pesticides do cause damage to humans if they are exposed to large amounts. But I can't find any documented cases where these kinds of symptoms were caused to people inside a building when pesticides were sprayed outside. I've seen the argument that, "These people were in sealed buildings so it was more concentrated," but I don't buy that. That's not how sealed, air-conditioned buildings like hotels, government housing and office buildings work. The people most at risk from pesticide overexposure are the people applying the pesticides and the people in the immediate vicinity. The Cuban people who live in unsealed homes with fresh-air ventilation would be much more at risk of such exposure and we don't see any cases of them having been affected.

Plus, MPI and pesticides don't satisfactorily explain the incidents that happened in Moscow, China and elsewhere.

 

[Checkmite]

I've tried going that route. I've tried asking how, for instance, one person in China, or a grand total of 4 people in a city as populous as Washington D.C., can be considered to be suffering from mass psychogenic illness. It doesn't go anywhere. A lack of "mass" apparently isn't contraindicative.

 

[xjx388]

I've tried going that route. I've tried asking how, for instance, one person in China, or a grand total of 4 people in a city as populous as Washington D.C., can be considered to be suffering from mass psychogenic illness. It doesn't go anywhere. A lack of "mass" apparently isn't contraindicative.

I guess the argument is along the lines of, “diplomats in stressful situations throughout the world hear about ‘attacks’ then begin to suffer symptoms themselves.” Dann just posted something that would indicate they think the State Department memo is capable of spreading the incidents.

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.

 

[dann]

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

Let's explore the idea of mass psychogenic illness as an explanation. I think that it's a real phenomenon that can happen in an environment where there is high anxiety/stress and where there is a trigger. I don't think it can be completely ruled out here and there may be an element of MPI at play.

However, it can't be the full explanation because of two big factors:

1)It has happened in far-flung locations with people who don't know each other, whereas most MPI incidents occur in close groups of people all in the same place around the same timeframe.

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)

2)MPI incidents don't have organic causes or cause detectable damage to organs. In these cases we have documented damage to the brain that align with reported symptoms.

"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:

"The next day, I found news reports talking about how the Pokémon attacks were the talk of the school yard—of course they were!" Radford told me. "There were about 600 kids who genuinely did have headaches and convulsions and breathing problems and it wasn't until two days later when everyone's hearing about it, everybody in the schoolyard is talking about it. That was the key, because that provided the opportunity for the contagion."
Radford said that the wider phenomenon was not photosensitive epilepsy but a condition known as mass hysteria. It's a real phenomenon where people are under stress to the point where they self-produced physical reactions. They are convinced by external influences that something will happen to them, and then it does.
"It's not that they're faking it," Radford explained. "It's not that they're imagining it. The symptoms are real, it's just that they're being caused by being exposed to other people exhibiting those symptoms."

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.

Now let's explore pesticides. Pesticides do cause damage to humans if they are exposed to large amounts. But I can't find any documented cases where these kinds of symptoms were caused to people inside a building when pesticides were sprayed outside. I've seen the argument that, "These people were in sealed buildings so it was more concentrated," but I don't buy that. That's not how sealed, air-conditioned buildings like hotels, government housing and office buildings work. The people most at risk from pesticide overexposure are the people applying the pesticides and the people in the immediate vicinity. The Cuban people who live in unsealed homes with fresh-air ventilation would be much more at risk of such exposure and we don't see any cases of them having been affected.

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.

Plus, MPI and pesticides don't satisfactorily explain the incidents that happened in Moscow, China and elsewhere.

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'.

 

[dann]

I've tried going that route. I've tried asking how, for instance, one person in China, or a grand total of 4 people in a city as populous as Washington D.C., can be considered to be suffering from mass psychogenic illness. It doesn't go anywhere. A lack of "mass" apparently isn't contraindicative.

No, mass is not at all contraindicative as I have explained several times - to you specifically more than to xjx388. One person in China comes down with something and it is immediately connected to something that happened to other people on the other side of the world and even to people in Washington. They are part of a community. The USA has told them that they are, and that as such they should be on the lookout for certain (very common) symptoms indicating that they are the victims of attacks from an adversary of the USA.

 

[dann]

I guess the argument is along the lines of, “diplomats in stressful situations throughout the world hear about ‘attacks’ then begin to suffer symptoms themselves.” Dann just posted something that would indicate they think the State Department memo is capable of spreading the incidents.

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.

You haven't looked very hard. I have mentioned several cases several times in this thread, including the Danish HPV girls and the Japanese Pokemon victims.
Another one would be 5G anxiety - unless you think that people who suffer from EHS are also the victims of microwaves ...

 

[dann]

A fairly new study of the Danish HPV-vaccine scare, which not only affected the percentage of girls getting the HPV vaccine but even spilled over and affected the percentage of children getting the MMR vaccine:

Thus, the introduction of HPV vaccine was popular and it had positive spill-over effects on MMR vaccine uptake and coverage on Danish adolesents.

Then in 2013 Danish newspapers started covering possible serious (but unsubstantiated) side effects to the vaccine. Stories were told about girls suffering from cramps, dizzyness, frequent headaches, fainting, and tiredness and the physical symptoms were interpreted as connected to the HPV vaccine. Danish television followed up in 2015 broadcasting a documentary on what was framed as possible severe side effects of the vaccine.

The media coverage cost a serious decline in HPV vaccine uptake. While around 95% of the adolesents wanted the vaccine during the first years, only around 30% had it after the news scare had made its impact.

Contagious media attention

The influence the media scare had on HPV vaccine uptake is established knowledge. The news is, that the media coverage did not only affect the HPV vaccine uptake – also the MMR vaccine uptake was affected.
The contagious nature of a vaccine scare (May 22, 2020)

ETA: The Danish case reminds me of the MMR scare instigated by Andrew Wakefield: MMR vaccine and autism (Wikipedia). And in that case, the alleged victims actually suffered from an actual disorder: autism! It just wasn't caused by vaccines. That idea was spread to the whole world by the media.