Literally from the first moment the story broke, I had completely discounted the magical sonic weapon theory and was wondering what was in their environment and whether they had instead been poisoned. It fits <i>vastly</i> better, and there are much better questions to be asked probing the nature of the poisoning. The entire "sonic weapon" angle seemed to be some kind of fabrication to <i>immediately</i> drum up Cold War feelings against Cuba and the ongoing efforts to end the embargo and return to normalcy.<p>In fact, it was this very story that makes me wonder to this day if Obama's move to normalize relations with Cuba in 2014-15 was the inciting incident behind Russia's decision to start the Digital Cold War in the first place.
I don't know that there's enough info for an outsider to reliably guess what actually happened...poison, versus microwave attacks, versus sonic attacks, etc.<p>However, there seems to be enough smoke to assume "some kind of deliberate attack".<p>That, on it's own, seems enough to dictate the path forward. More onus and pressure on the Cubans to solve it. Certainly they could provide an environment immune from most vectors.
How could it be tinnitus if there is a recording of the sound?<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocwjNJ6EGyQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocwjNJ6EGyQ</a>
"Salvi said drugs prescribed to alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy, like Cisplatin...." Correction: Cisplatin <i>is</i> the chemotherapy drug that causes those side effects. It is indeed ototoxic.
If this story keeps showing up in the news, but without any real information, I’d suspect that this constant simmering vagueness belies undisclosed information locked behind operational secrecy that prevents the public from understanding the media pressure and the suspicion.<p>This is to say, fingers are being pointed, but we only receive incomplete information. It’s sort of like seeing two neighbors bicker about trash collection and garbage cans, but they leave out glaring details about known trash can abductions by space aliens, that they’ve been summoning with multi-colored LED flash lights.
What if it was an accidental poisoning? Maybe the embassy got a shipment of bad rum. Methanol poisoning would explain the white matter damage and disorientation.
As a Canadian, this has always seemed weird that they were Canadian victims too. Sure Canada is a US ally, but there's been a pretty big difference in policy toward Cuba between the two.
...poison? Aren't there actual recording(s) of the sounds? [1]<p>I guess this doesn't rule out them having bee poisoned on top of it, but it sure does raise eyebrows. Are they hypothesizing sounds were used to cover up the poison or something?<p>And given that even the article acknowledges some had concussions (here's another source I saw it in [2]) I'm not sure why the poison hypothesis is being entertained?<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghdLfQsztBo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghdLfQsztBo</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-sonic-weapon-attacks-at-us-embassy-in-cuba-deepens" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-son...</a>
FBI and other sweeps have repeatedly turned up nothing localized, so whatever is transmitting is likely not in the building(s) unless they are passive-reflectors. The general public probably have no idea just how advanced directed energy weapons are these days, which is what I am guessing this is, but I think they might be <i>much</i> longer range than people thing. Of course it's all speculation.
Because of the embargo, Cubans are using a lot of stuff that the rest of us got rid of a long time ago.<p>I would guess that the cause is something in the environment to which native Cubans have developed a tolerance or else an avoidance habit.<p>Embassy personnel go there and live in the community without these habits or tolerance, and some of them get sick.
Something like this may explain the localized noise:
<a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431264-600-ultrasonic-speaker-lets-you-whisper-to-people-30-metres-away/" rel="nofollow">https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431264-600-ultrason...</a>
Could be a stolen US/China weapon or at least a stolen smaller component of a larger US weapon. Or stolen IP of some new weapon which was then built by the thieves.<p>Maybe this was originally supposed to be use as a component of missile defense and now it’s been repurposed as a brain melter.<p>I only say this because I don’t know if many countries have the budget to develop advanced, new weaponry.<p>This may be a leak of epic proportions as some group is running around with some deadly advanced new weapon.<p>The existence of these weapons might reveal which weapons our government is focused on.
Skeptoid had a very interesting episode [0] on this subject recently. The analysis points to a mass psychogenic event; makes sense.<p>References and further reading located at end of article.<p>[0] <a href="https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4603" rel="nofollow">https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4603</a>