Cuban experts claim to have considered toxins, electromagnetic waves and insects as possible causes:

Oh, just an emotional reaction on my part. My biases are showing. Pesticides scare me.

That's why I put in weasel words like "think" "might" and "possibility". I figured three weasel words would be enough.

Oh, and eta: My bias in relation to psychogenic (imaginary) causes is the opposite of Sceptic G's: She's a nurse and so has heard a lot of conflicting symptoms from worried people. I'm someone who hates going to the doctor, so I don't unless there's really something wrong with me. I know myself very well (I'm always being commended on the metacognitive skills) even if I can't use a soldering iron. I can't imagine going to the doctor and just complaining about vague things like being run down, or having headaches, etc.

In other words, my bias is toward believing that some people were actually sick from something.

I know the feeling, but I would probably still resort to the Sick-President Syndrome. At least it's got syndrome in it, so it must be something serious! :)

They did not have cartoons in Japan in medieval times; that reference was to a case from 1997. The fainting schoolgirls reference was to a case from Sri Lanka in 2012. The laughing epidemic comes to us from 1962. In fact of all the cases I made a reference to only a single one was from "medieval" times, which was the "dancing mania".

Most of these are simple personal delusions, not cases of mass hysteria. "Windmill sickness", "WiFi sensitivity", "Morgellon's disease", and being a "targeted individual" are similar instances. Yes, in the internet age individuals who have these delusions are able to find each other, communicate, and reinforce each other's delusions; but two people who live downwind from a wind turbine but a mile away from each other getting "sick", and finding a website where they can talk to isolated "sick" people downwind from wind turbines in completely different regions and countries does not make a case of "mass hysteria". Likewise, a person living near a cell tower who gets sick, and only later finds out about cell towers "making people sick" and becomes convinced that's what happened to him, is not a victim of "mass hysteria"; he's just wrong.

As for "sick building syndrome" - again, "mass hysteria" is a reach. When minor illnesses with simple symptoms are a dependable occurrence, and nearly everyone works in buildings where many other people work, and a good number of people live in multi-family dwellings, it is a statistical inevitability that there will be workplaces and apartment buildings where there is what looks like an unusually high number of inhabitants with a variety of illnesses at the same time.

The point was, we are already in the "near future" relative to the months-old events in the article you're referencing. At what point do we stop being in the "near future" of those events? A year afterward? Can't be too many cases of mass hysteria where some random tourist succumbs to the "mystery illness" 8 months later.

The "kind" of memory loss here meaning, "inability to recall certain words", as related by the article I presume? This isn't very specific at all; it could just as easily refer to a diminishing score on a CAS assessment during a checkup, rather than a victim running in a mortal panic to his doctor because there's been a word right on the tip of his tongue all day and he just knows That Cuba Thing must've made him unable to recall it.

But that's not always true, though. Of course things like fractures have simple explanations. Many diseases have defining and singular characteristics that allow them to be diagnosed as easily as a broken bone, or tests that are highly accurate at indicating the presence of a specific pathogen. Other symptoms like headaches and nausea are far less definitive or useful for diagnosis. They are actually caused by real diseases - AND can also be caused by stress, or environmental factors, or nothing at all. And without something specific to look for, it's very difficult to perform tests; hospitals generally cannot take a vial of blood and literally screen it for an all-encompassing list of every single chemical and pathogen it contains which can then be scrutinized to root out the culprit whatever it may be. For the most part, doctors must look at the totality of symptoms and hope that somewhere among them is a telltale, or at least something suggestive of an actual, more specific, practical and likely path to diagnosis - something that tells them which of the myriad more-narrow and -practical tests available to them is most likely to give a useful result. If they can't find such a helpful symptom or symptoms, they do not immediately leap to "hypochondriac" or "mass hysteria". The symptoms are typically just considered idiopathic and the course of treatment then becomes to simply treat the symptoms.


That's convenient in the case of diarrhea specifically; but here you've taken one symptom of from a list I've given, and one cause from a list I've given, and while you've earned congratulations for managing to square those specific items with each other, we can't act like that throws the entire point out the window. Diarrhea, among symptoms, and local infectious bacteria, among causes, happen to be particularly easy to diagnose just as you describe. The headaches and nausea, and environmental causes, do not so easy lend themselves to simple tests as I explained above.


I don't see where "semi-skeptics" is important to the scenario; a ship of outstanding fools can just as easily each come down with something around the same time and wonder if there's a connection with no less credibility. But essentially, I disagree - I think the idea of a bunch of people "coming down with something on a sea cruise" is a rather excellent metaphor for what has happened in this case.

I think it is evident now that there was something. (I did not think so at the start). The reason is that there are people with direct knowledge of what happened who have a large incentive to discredit the claims, and they have not.
Ben Rhodes (former Deputy Nat. Security Advisor), who was heavily involved in the detente negotiations , does not question if it happened but speculates on who did it.
The possibilities according to his recent interview in Europe:
Then there is Mark Feierstein (Former NSC Sr. Director Western Hemisphere) who wrote a piece on Oct 10:
On the issue of removing the staff at the embassy he says:
Further, the people working at the NSC during Obama's term are still working there including this guy who McMaster promoted to be his Sr. Advisor last month:
So it seems that the sources leaking info about this 'mysterious covert sonic weapon' overlap both administrations and neither side disputes it. In fact it's possible that Rhodes is a source himself. The reporter who broke the story in a State Dept briefing, Steve Dorsey, happens to work for Ben Rhodes brother, CBS President David Rhodes, as an Exec for CBS Radio.

In that briefing, spokesperson Nauert is quite personal with the room of reporters but she needs to ask Dorsey his name. (Not so for the AP's Matt Lee who is there with him and they will end up collaborating on Cuba stories.) Hours later, Dorsey puts out an article including "a source familiar with the incidents" that goes way beyond any facts given in the briefing. From then on the AP and CBS manage to get all the 'scoops' from official sources (except a report by CNN).

It is all very curious, isn't it?

It's still possible that everyone 'in the know' long ago concluded it's mainly a psychogenic phenomena and the Obama folks are agreeing to, and perhaps even instigating, the 'attack' story to avert some larger looming threat to US-Cuba relations, and hence, protecting Obama's legacy.

But reading between the lines in their interviews it sounds more like Cuba did do something and the Obama folks are saying "Hey, we understand it wasn't your official orders to do that so let's try to get through this on good terms."

It was reported that Trump said "Cuba did some bad things".
But that isn't what he said. He said "Some very bad things happened in Cuba. They did some bad things in Cuba." Because he puts little thought into his off-the-cuff remarks, sometimes there is truth in there!

The 'health attack' may just be the public face of some activity more serious that is not disclosed, like avoiding WW3 with Russia because we caught them doing 'bad things' there and Cuban forces were complicit.

”near future” has now grown to such proportions that it requires a post of its own to untangle it!
It began on Nov. 3 with Delphic Oracle quoting a news report:


But maybe Checkmite’s calendar just doesn’t work. If you google the text that Delphic Oracle quoted, you find this: This article is 1 month old , which I guess will change to two months in a week or so.
That was an awful lot of work to clear up this little problem!

No, you're probably right, I don't know much about the history of Japanese cartoons, but we can agree that they weren't around in the middle ages. In 2012 there should have been a good chance that somebody recorded their symptoms systematically - depending on if and when health authorities were contacted, so I can't help wondering why you go into great detail about this and choose to ignore (= leave out) this:

Thank you for clearing that up, Checkmite - as if anybody needed this attempt at obfuscation: It does indeed require a little more than one person to define something as mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness! One person does not constitute mass! (As if anybody had claimed that this is the definition.)

However, when a lot of these individual cases come together and inspire each other, then it is mass hysteria/mass psychogenic illness. Your case, however, about the one, individual person who "only later finds out about cell towers", is plain fiction, invented for the occasion, pure fabrication: as if that's the way people come down with electro smog syndrome: They never ever talk with anybody else about their weird symptoms until after they've developed them, and only then does each individual case "become convinced that's what happened to him."
Yeah, right!

That's as much as I have time for for now.

Wow! You've actually gone full-blown conspiracy theory now! Is Kim Jong Un involved?

I just have time for one more:

Yes, but that's not what we're talking about here. Yes, people come down with all kinds of stuff all the time or, as you put it, "with a variety of illnesses at the same time." However, if they come down with a variety of illnesses that medical doctors can't explain as regular symptoms of regular diseases, that's when you start to wonder what's going on.
And again, people's symptoms shouldn't simply be dismissed as psychogenic unless they've been thoroughly examined to rule out actual diseases. But on the other hand, you also shouldn't let yourself be fooled by the symptoms of mass hallucination. Case in point:

And another one:
"inability to recall certain words" is a pretty specific description of memory loss. I wouldn't expect them to specify which "certain words" they were talking about: pronouns, auxiliary verbs, four-letter words or words beginning with the letter c.

Please, spare me the hyperbole! Who said anything about "immediately"?! Your very long introduction to your very short point is correct, in as far as MDs examine the patient, looks at the symptoms, and based on that they come up with an assumption about what is wrong with people and a possible cure. Sometimes the treatment starts here, and only if it doesn't seem to help do they begin to suspect that the symptoms might be caused by something else, and so they try another treatment. Or the first test(s) was/were inconclusive, but based on this conclusion they move on to other tests.
However - and I know this from the case of my girlfriend, who had Hodgkin's about 35 years ago - when they still don't find anything conclusive, they begin to consider sending you to a psychiatrist. (The girlfriend I mentioned was scheduled to see a psychiatrist because she was still in pain after six months of different kinds of treatment, and only because they finally discovered what actually caused the pain, was the appointment with the psychiatrist cancelled.)
So MDs usually don't begin to consider psychogenic illness or hyponcondria until they've ruled out at least the most common causes associated with the symptoms exhibited by a patient. And again: Nobody said: "immediately"!


That depends on the specific "environmental cause." Radiation, for instance? Sometimes it's very easy to diagnose, sometimes it isn't. Very often it also depends on the severity of the symptoms.

Excecpt that in your fictitious analogy:
you have invented people who keenly notice, simply wonder and investigate, instead of a bunch of scared people imagining things and attacks with sonic blasters - as it appears to have been the case in the real world.

PS Let me help you with this one, Checkmite,

Since the task is probably too daunting for you, I’ve taken it upon myself to ‘look through some past cases’, that is, the ones that you mentioned:
Apparently you got most of your examples from this Wikipedia list of notable cases of mass hysteria, but you didn’t even bother to investigate beyond the one-to-six-line descriptions of the cases.

In the case of the The Dancing Plague of 1518, it doesn’t say that ”all of the victims share the exact same symptoms”, but it does say that “some of those affected died of heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.” Some, Checkmite, obviously not all.
That’s right! It doesn’t say that "every (!) person who ends up being afflicted” dances AND dies AND is buried AND …

This is what you find if you use google’s own link to the case from 1962:
However, you will notice that the Wikipedia article about this case doesn’t claim that ‘every single person who ends up being afflicted laughs AND has pain AND faints AND farts AND has respiratory problems AND has rashes AND cries AND screams.’
Why not?

And if we finally go to the Denno Senshi Porygo case:
At this point I don’t need to quote you anymore, Checkmite. These cases obviously contradict your claim, they show the exact opposite of what you say they do, and I’m pretty sure that you realize that.
If not, then at least I am absolutely sure that they convince everybody else …

Haha! Yes, well I have competing theories dueling it out in my own head.

For me, the thing that has caused me to rethink the possibilities is the fact that no one with knowledge of it has come out with a skeptical view. Not even as an anonymous source. It's been presented as this extraordinary claim without any solid evidence of who or what it could be. Where is the usual debate?

Don't you find it odd that everyone accepts that the removal of embassy staff was the right thing to do? It was a major setback to normalization to do that. There should have been some heavy criticism that followed.
Disagreements do exist on the expulsion of the 2 Cuban diplomats, the "excessive" travel warning, and the stoppage of visa services. But that some sort of targeted attack happened? No one seems to question it.

I think that this case is a variation of my sig-line quotation:
"Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht
Except that in this case, it should go: "The stupidity of stupid claims renders …"

If you are an ordinary reporter, how the hell do you go about contradicting or even questioning these statements? The obvious thing to do, of course, is to ask the experts, and almost all of them seem to agree: There is no such thing as the super sonic weapon, and if there were, it would have to be so enormous in size that you couldn't possibly conceal it. So it's not true that "No one seems to question it." (In Denmark, too, by the way: Scientist: Questionable that American diplomats were exposed to sonic weapons (Ingeniøren, Aug. 15, 2017)).
And I have a hard time believing that the US agents in Havana have no counter-espionage apparatus, that they have no surveillance whatsoever of their immediate surroundings, so why didn't they detect the super sonic blasters?!

Apart from that, people involved in spying generally aren't available for interviews, and in this case we don't seem to have a single eyewitness report. Trump doesn't question anything because he can use the story politically - and he is not exactly a big fan of truth anyway. And the spies themselves are probably too embarrassed by the whole thing at this point, which might also be the reason why they won't allow the Cubans to see as much as the medical reports. If some disgruntled employee with a grudge feels the need to leak more embarrassing details at some point, we'll know more, but until then …

And remember: The people at the US embassy in Havana continued to invite friends and family to visit them after the 'attacks' began! That doesn't sound like the beginning of WW3 to me!

US administration publishes new Cuba travel restrictions

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-41918907

The US administration has published a series of measures increasing limits on Americans' dealings with Cuba.
The package includes a blacklist of state-owned companies and entities, including shops and hotels.
Most US citizens travelling to the island will now have to go as part of organised tour groups.
The measures come as part of a partial rollback of ex-president Barack Obama's policy of engagement with Cuba, as announced by President Trump in June.
Officials have denied that any of these steps are related to the recent acoustic incidents, defined as "health attacks" by the state department against its officials in Havana.

Restrictions have also been placed on people-to-people exchanges, a travel category under which Americans can stay with families on the island.
From now on, these exchanges can only take place "under the auspices of an organisation subject to US jurisdiction" and accompanied by a representative of that organisation.

I've long had the suspicion that the Trump Administration wanted to roll back another Obama accomplishment, the improvement in relations with Cuba. This seems to confirm my suspicions and in part seem to be an attempt to bolster GOP among Cuban ex-pats in places like Florida.

No need to suspect anything! He thought that he already did!

I'm talking about people with insider knowledge, not experts who are giving opinions based on the news story.
There are people with access to the highest security level information, inside and outside the current administration, who were working with Cuba and were there at the time. They are pro-normalization. It's their treatment of the attacks as fact that I find unusual given that it plays against their stated goals.
Why is some unknown secret weapon an accepted theory instead of say, a drug or poison that alters perception? Or the obvious psychogenic one?
Wouldn't you think they might say "That's quite a bold theory when there is no evidence such a device exists. These are clearly scare tactics! I trust the FBI will deliver their findings and Americans will be assured that Cuba was, and continues to be safe for our embassy staff." ??? Why are they not saying that?

No idea. The FBI has been there 4 times now. It's reasonable to think they have something they are investigating that requires their presence. I agree though that, whatever their theory, it didn't involve anything that would be caught on surveillance.
Maybe the FBI are lollygagging bureaucrats that go through certain investigative requirements before making a final report. Or they are using this unique 'invitation' to spend time with Cuban police/intelligence (basically working for the CIA). Who knows? They are currently acting as if they have something serious to investigate.

Yes, seems it wasn't considered some serious thing until later when some sort of pattern emerged. The illnesses, taken separately, are things with normal explanations, besides the descriptions individuals gave of sounds and vibrations. If it was super obvious, there would not be people who delayed reporting for weeks or months. Of course, that makes it seem as if they themselves had a normal explanation for what happened to them at the time and were later suggestible to recollect it in a more sinister way. Plus, there are still staff there now, so the threat level can't be very high or they would all be evacuated. (Like I said, I have competing theories!).

There was one eyewitness report that described vibrations being in one part of a room. Ill see if I can find it.

Here's the one first hand account - it's brief. AP News.


These AP reporters, who get nearly all of the inside scoops, lay on the dramatics pretty thick!

True. But it wasn't always the case. For the majority of his campaign, and 5 or 6 visits to Florida, Trump was fine with opening up Cuba- especially market opportunities, like hotels and resorts. No surprise there really. He did say the deal could have been better.
In September 2016, his views had changed.
Of course, this was after he became the nominee and more pressure was on to get those Florida votes. In the final stretch, you do what it takes to win, right? But it was also after he had access to classified security briefings (began Aug 17), which may have changed his friendly outlook.

My guess is that security has been tightened since Wikileaks and Snowden. The "treatment of the attacks as fact" is one thing, but at the same time they say that they don't know what might have caused it, which makes it a very strange 'fact' indeed!


At one point the US authorities required no restrictions on the number of personnel being allowed to enter Cuba. This was one way increasing that number, if only temporarily, and probably also of gaining access to places that would otherwise have been off limits.


But that is the one that might just be a cricket or tinnitus (noise only, no vibrations): He heard the noise in bed, it disappeared when he got out of bed, only to return when he got back in bed again.

The Cuba Acoustic Files: “The Balloon that Inflates By Itself” (Havana Times, Oct. 21, 2017)

An article about the declassified JFK files also mentions the recent 'attacks':

One of the statements was: "Some victims now have problems concentrating or recalling specific words."

The condition seems to be called either dysnomia, “Difficulty remembering names or recalling specific words: word finding problems,” or anomic aphasia.

In adults the latter may be caused by a stroke: Causes of Anomic Aphasia.

A new statement has been issued by the CUBAN SOCIETY OF OTORHINOLARYNGOLOGY AND HEAD AND NECK SURGERY

(And in case I’m not the only one who didn’t know the word OTORHINOLARYNGOLOGY (Wikipedia))

Nurse practitioner and in the particular areas of occupational health and infectious disease. It's not that I've seen a lot of patients, it's that I've addressed this particular phenomena more than once. The whole 'tear down the building someone found mold' hysteria happened when I was working as the hospital employee health provider. We also had a bunch of employees that thought something in the ED was giving people rashes and headaches. Headache and scratchy throat was a common catching ailment. ;) And then there are the worker's comp cases where people are sure the new carpet or the building makes them ill, yet rarely if ever does someone's new carpet in the home make people ill. Driving to work with all those road fumes and disintegrating tires one breathes in every day never seems to create the same problems as work environmental toxins.

I'm saying in essence this is a problem that comes up in occupational health. I've had considerable experience and education in this area.

And I should point out, sometimes we actually do find building issues. And sometimes people really are reacting to new paint or new carpet fumes. There are indicators that help distinguish between hysteria and actual environmental toxins.

This fits with what I see as well in as much as one can go by news accounts: oto- ear
rhino - nose
larynx - throat

I have considerable experience in not going to the doctor and in not being in an organization where I might be pressured to lie like the CIA, and a lot of experience of just kicking back, smoking weed, and masturbating.

Also, in fairness, listening to improving music.

So I would never go to the doctor unless I were unable to enjoy these things.

No worries. I wasn't discounting your experience. I was correcting a false assumption you made about mine.

Thank you. I recognized the rhino from rhinoplasty and the larynx from laryngitis, but the oto … not so much even though I think I've used it once before myself in this thread.
Also: How do you tell them apart at first glance? OTOR-HINOL-ARYN-GOLOGY?! :)

I've been in Berlin for the past couple of days so I didn't hear that Cuba had an online forum about the alleged acoustic attacks Thursday & Friday this week, and I hadn't noticed the announcement when it was made one week ago:

Cuba Puts Its Scientists Online To Dispute Washington's Sonic Attack Claims
Call to online forum on the alleged accoustic attacks
Statement of the Cuban Expert Committee on the celebration of the Online Forum (Nov. 17, 2017)

If you are familiar with the prefixes/words your brain divides them appropriately. And ology is a very common suffix meaning the study of or the science of. Surely most people in this forum recognized that one.

As for oto, anyone who has ever used an otoscope would recognize that one.


Nice links, BTW.

Is the embassy closed yet?

Seems to be up and running - unless you're Cuban and need a visa for the USA.

Breaking News (5 hours ago):
US govt taps star brain-injury doctor to probe attacks on American diplomats (Crendy News, Nov. 20, 2017)

Science vs. manipulation in alleged sonic attacks (CMHW Leader Radio Station, Nov. 15, 2017)

US experts prepare to release ‘sonic attack’ findings amid Cuba’s denial - Sources say Journal of the American Medical Association to publish findings (Local Ten News, Nov. 16, 2017)

Experts note inconsistencies in hypothesis about alleged sonic attacks (Granma, Nov. 16, 2016)

Does anybody know anything about cicadas and crickets in Uzbekistan? They seem to be quite common.

But this is the news today: Uzbekistan incident raises suspicions of Russian involvement in Cuba attacks:


Incident In Uzbekistan Raising Suspicions Russia Involved In Cuba Sonic Attacks (CBS Miami, Nov. 28, 2017)

I notice that the "attacks" don't seem to be merely alleged in the CBS reports.

Breitbart (Nov. 29, 2017) reports that

Doctors find brain abnormalities in victims of Cuba mystery


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...2d0_story.html

Alien Attack? Mass Hysteria? Conspiracy?
 

I love that Washington Post article! Everybody who’s at all interested in the truth about this case should read it.

I notice in particular the reference to ”white matter” in William Parcher's quotation, but also this:

That makes it so much easier for us to connect the dots:

1) As early as the second day of this thread, September 18, I mentioned ”that Alzheimer is much more frequent among people who suffer loss of hearing”. See also: Hearing Loss is Associated With Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease: A Case-Control Study in Older People

2) Cerebral White Matter Disease is Associated with Alzheimer Pathology in a Prospective Cohort

3) Most patients recovering fully is consistent with the course that outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness usually run:

But apart from that, the US authorities have handled this case like true nincompoops. At least they have if the purpose had ever been to stop the outbreak instead of, what seems to have been and probably still is the case, causing an international diplomatic incident:


So we are now left with: Mass Hysteria! Conspiracy!
But two out of three ain't bad! :)