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'Havana Syndrome': Diplomatic Staff Malaise In Cuba & China—A Sonic Or Microwave Weapon?

I tend to think the white matter anomalies are more consistent with exposure to a pathogen or toxin.
 
There was an article in a recent FT that said targeted sonic weapons of the kind that were apparently used were entirely plausible. But to what purpose? It's the why that's the big question to me here. Can't be simple vandalism, can it? There doesn't seem to be anything to gain - unless the victims so far have been test subjects and a bigger target is in the attackers' minds.
 
They are entirely real, yes.
 
As has already been said, sonic weapons certainly exist, but you'd know all about it as they're painfully loud.

What's unexplained in this case is what sort of device could damage your hearing without you being aware of it until sometime later. There's been no plausible explanation for this.

The why is yet to be discovered as well.
 
Here's an update from the first coordinated medical study on the alleged victims. It's preliminary, but it does support the notion that the effects were demonstrable and not simply mass hysteria.

A link to the actual report (published in JAMA) is provided below, if you want to dig into the details ...
Report details harm to Cuba diplomats but offers no cause
Doctors are releasing the first detailed medical reports about the hearing, vision, balance and brain symptoms suffered in what the State Department has called “health attacks” on U.S. diplomats in Cuba. Still missing: A clear diagnosis of just what happened to trigger their mysterious health problems.

All together, the symptoms are similar to the brain dysfunction seen with concussions, concluded a team of specialists from the University of Pennsylvania who tested 21 of the 24 embassy personnel thought to be affected.

Whatever the cause, the Havana patients “experienced persisting disability of a significant nature,” the Penn team concluded. ...

The mystery began in late 2016 ... — initially leading investigators to suspect “sonic attacks.” Now, officials are carefully avoiding that term, as doctors involved in the probe wonder whether the sounds were a byproduct of something else that might help explain the full symptom list ...

“Before reaching any definitive conclusions, additional evidence must be obtained and rigorously and objectively evaluated,” JAMA associated editor Dr. Christopher Muth cautioned ...

He noted that many of the symptoms overlap with a list of other neurologic illnesses.

“It really looks like concussion without the history of head trauma,” report co-author Dr. Douglas Smith of Penn’s Center for Brain Injury and Repair, said in a podcast provided by JAMA.

He said that sound, heard by 18 of the 21 patients, couldn’t be to blame: “There is no known mechanism for audible sound to injure the brain. We have to suspect that it’s a consequence of something else.” ...

The new report outlined the battery of testing the patients underwent, including some findings that can’t be even unconsciously altered, bolstering the doctors’ belief that the symptoms were not mass hysteria. ...

Viruses or chemical exposures are unlikely, Smith’s team wrote, although they couldn’t be “systematically excluded.”

Advanced MRI scans spotted “a few” changes in what are called white matter tracts of the brain in some patients, with three showing more than would be expected for their age, the report said. But the authors acknowledged those abnormalities could be due to something earlier in life.

For many the symptoms lasted months, and doctors designed customized rehabilitation therapy that did seem to help. ...
Click to expand...

FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/3efc219628784d14...ls-harm-to-Cuba-diplomats-but-offers-no-cause

JAMA Article Cited: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673168
 
I do not see any big mystery here.

Read the study and the accompanying commentaries. The Editorial and separate commentary, are very skeptical because the data they have produced are inconclusive and can be explained by other plausible alternative explanations. The study also misrepresents the literature on mass hysteria, which remains the most plausible explanation. If you want to criticise this post - go ahead, but read the articles first (they are available online). Before people criticize me and say that 'white matter tract' changes and 'concussion-like symptoms' cannot be caused by mass hysteria, read the articles. The claims of concussion-like symptoms and white matter changes, are very much open to debate. My money is on mass hysteria.
 
You may be right - there's certainly no current plausible physical explanation for the complaints.

I note that

For many the symptoms lasted months, and doctors designed customized rehabilitation therapy that did seem to help. ...
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Does that mean they've all now 'recovered' or are some still suffering?
 
hunck said:
You may be right - there's certainly no current plausible physical explanation for the complaints.

I note that



Does that mean they've all now 'recovered' or are some still suffering?
Click to expand...

The report states that they are all getting better.
 
Yes, the science column in the FT was extremely sceptical about this being a sonic weapon at all, and mass hysteria was blamed. But that's not much of an explanation either, too difficult to pin down.
 
Targeted high-power microwaves can be considered a sonic weapon. If they are focused on a point in air precisely enough, they can cause localised heating and this could generate a sound. If focused on a person's head, they could cause eardrums to experience the sound directly (or worse - the brain could be affected).
It's already known that some microwave technology has been developed that can beam speech into a person's head (can't remember which agency has done that - probably the Russians).
 
Mythopoeika said:
Targeted high-power microwaves can be considered a sonic weapon. If they are focused on a point in air precisely enough, they can cause localised heating and this could generate a sound. If focused on a person's head, they could cause eardrums to experience the sound directly (or worse - the brain could be affected).
It's already known that some microwave technology has been developed that can beam speech into a person's head (can't remember which agency has done that - probably the Russians).
Click to expand...

How can you tell the difference between speech "beamed" into someone's head and psychosis? Isn't this going down one of those internet rabbit holes that ends up with people wearing tinfoil hats to stop the waves entering their brains? A bit paranoid urban myth-y?
 
GNC said:
How can you tell the difference between speech "beamed" into someone's head and psychosis? Isn't this going down one of those internet rabbit holes that ends up with people wearing tinfoil hats to stop the waves entering their brains? A bit paranoid urban myth-y?
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Well, yes - you probably can't tell. But...since it happened to several people, I don't think we can suspect 'normal' psychosis.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Well, yes - you probably can't tell. But...since it happened to several people, I don't think we can suspect 'normal' psychosis.
Click to expand...

I don't think there's any such thing as normal psychosis, it's a condition that affects many people in many different ways and has a variety of triggers.
 
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There's little chance of demonstrating likelihood for a mass hysteria diagnosis without a detailed survey / analysis of times, places, and social interactions. The published report excludes such data out of hand and doesn't mention whether any such analysis had been done.

More generally, there's been very little mentioned about commonalities among the purported victims. We essentially know only that they were American government personnel in Havana. I've not seen any claims about commonalities among the American subjects' locations, movements, jobs, and/or timeframes of apparent exposure.

I'm still unclear about how many separate locations were involved. The JAMA article refers to the subjects' residences as 'homes' and 'hotels' (both plural).

There are three interesting factoids in the JAMA report that don't mesh well with the notion a sonic weapon was involved. First, there wasn't uniform agreement on the characteristics of the audible sound(s) detected. Second, the resultant auditory problems (e.g., diminished hearing; tinnitus) were unilateral (affecting one ear only). Third, some of the subjects reported a sort of 'fluffing' effect on their eardrums (akin to buffeting from wind or air pressure changes). I'm familiar with this effect, and I'm confident the sound level necessary to induce it acoustically would be sufficient to shake the subject and/or the entire room. Nobody's mentioned any reports of such environmental vibration effects.

On the other hand, I find it very interesting that the associated sounds were characterized as directional (i.e., coming from somewhere 'here' rather than 'there'). I've seen no mention of any attempts to identify and / or correlate the direction(s) from which the apparent sound(s) originated.

I also notice that the range and consistency of the neuro- / cognitive symptoms could just as easily be attributed to ongoing sleep deprivation as to the effects of any occasional external influence.

I'm not convinced there wasn't an external influence involved, but I find it less and less reasonable to believe the mode of 'attack' was acoustic / sonic. It seems more reasonable to me to suspect the audible / auditory clues and demonstrable damages could have been secondary effects rather than direct effects of an acoustically-operative external influence.
 
And was each victim aware of the others before them? That might have made them suggestible. Though doesn't explain what set the first one off.
 
GNC said:
And was each victim aware of the others before them? That might have made them suggestible. ...
Click to expand...

That's the sort of thing a social network analysis (or similar survey / analysis) might reveal, but it's unclear whether anyone's done such a survey to date. The JAMA article explicitly excludes discussion of this sort of evidence by definition. However, the authors vaguely mention aspects of the case and their research that were withheld or kept private. As such, one cannot tell whether the JAMA authors had or generated data concerning the socio-historical development of the phenomenon.
 
I was just listening to Conga by Gloria Estefan. Was she trying to warn us of cuban sound weapons? Eventually the rhytm's going to get you.
 
Xanatic* said:
I was just listening to Conga by Gloria Estefan. Was she trying to warn us of cuban sound weapons? Eventually the rhytm's going to get you.
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Actually it is more the high pitched relentless screeching noises that are going to get you. More Mariah Carey than Gloria Estefan.
 
Problem solved?

Finally, a Likely Explanation for the “Sonic Weapon” Used at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba

Researchers say bad engineering, not a deliberate attack, may be to blame

... Looking at a spectral plot of the clip on YouTube, Kevin Fu, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, noted some unusual ripples. He thought he might know what they meant.

Fu’s lab specializes in analyzing the cybersecurity of devices connected to the Internet of Things, such as sensors, pacemakers, RFIDs, and autonomous vehicles. That work has taught him that modern electronics often behave in unpredictable ways and that such devices can be manipulated—intentionally or inadvertently—using carefully crafted acoustic or radio interference. To Fu, the ripples in the spectral readout suggested some kind of interference. ...

Yan and Xu started with a fast Fourier transform of the AP audio, which revealed the signal’s exact frequencies and amplitudes. Then, through a series of simulations, Yan showed that an effect known as intermodulation distortion could have produced the AP sound. Intermodulation distortion occurs when two signals having different frequencies combine to produce synthetic signals at the difference, sum, or multiples of the original frequencies. ...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/semicondu...e-sonic-weapon-used-at-the-us-embassy-in-cuba



 
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