When I first read the stories about the strange events in the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba, I accepted them as fact. Why not, I thought, after all Cuba is not very friendly, and then there's Russia, probably trying to make trouble by zapping the Embassy. It did seem a bit odd though.
Then things got stranger, Canadians reported being affected, people were "targeted" in hotels. The incidents varied. And then I saw this list of symptoms today in The Guardian:
I'm familiar with this type of list because I used to write a lot about "Morgellons", a label for a similar constellation of symptoms that people self diagnose with after convincing themselves that fibers are emerging from their skin. The Morgellons symptoms, if we remove itching and finding things on your skin, are, in short form:
- Life altering fatigue
- Neurological impairment
- Visual and hearing changes
- Brain fog and diminished higher cognitive abilities
- Hair loss
- GI changes
- Muscle aches, Joint pain
- General malaise; intense, life-impacting pain
- Dental deterioration
- Sleep disturbances
- Psychiatric manifestations can include anxiety, depression, new onset of panic attacks, changes in behavior and personality.
Could the Cuba attacks be mass hysteria? More specifically we'd label it a "mass psychogenic illness"
If you work in a place where suspicion is normally quite high (like the embassy in Cuba), and people say that building is being subject to an attack that might damage your brain, then you are going to be hypersensitized to whatever your body is telling you. Right now I've got slight ringing in my ears, a headache, fatigue, and now that I think about it I have been having trouble hearing what people are saying on TV, plus my balance isn't what it was, I can't read fine print any more, and I only slept around 4 hours last night!. I've just not paid it much attention because it's just me getting old.
So even if there's a genuine attack or other cause for some of these symptoms, it's highly unlikely that everyone reporting them was actually affected by that cause.
[Note: for discussion of possible physical causes, including exotic weapons, see: https://www.metabunk.org/exotic-wea...al-causes-of-the-cuba-embassy-syndrome.t9104/ ]
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