{"id":243862,"date":"2021-09-20T12:54:32","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T16:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=243862"},"modified":"2021-09-20T12:54:32","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T16:54:32","slug":"neither-sonic-attacks-nor-havana-syndrome-cubas-scientific-refutation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba-usa\/neither-sonic-attacks-nor-havana-syndrome-cubas-scientific-refutation\/","title":{"rendered":"Neither \u201csonic attacks\u201d nor \u201cHavana Syndrome\u201d: Cuba\u2019s scientific refutation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The story of the <\/span>mysterious health incidents<\/span><\/a> reported by U.S. diplomats in Cuba and other parts of the world seems to be a never-ending story. Five years after the <\/span>first documented cases<\/span><\/a>, the enigma continues, while the map of the unusual events has spread to nations in Europe, Asia and even the United States itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

The theories about what happened are dissimilar and, in some cases, contradictory, without science having its last say for now. The <\/span>investigations carried out<\/span><\/a> have not provided conclusive evidence to date on the cause of the incidents or \u2014 if any \u2014 on their possible perpetrators, while the snowball has not stopped growing fueled by hypotheses and speculations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the initial reports came to light, released by the Trump administration in 2017 as the spearhead of its particular crusade against the island, the media have capitalized on this matter, jumping from one theory to another and giving shape to a narrative that, at this point, is assumed as valid by a great deal of its audience and brandished by U.S. politicians to target \u2014 once again \u2014 traditional nemesis such as Cuba and Russia, and win points (votes) with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

That narrative, which quickly focused on the disorders reported as a result of deliberate \u201cattacks,\u201d soon unleashed a crisis between Washington and Havana, which reduced diplomatic representation to a <\/span>minimum<\/span><\/a> and paralyzed the consular procedures of the United States on the island, gave rise to the expulsion of Cuban officials from the United States, heated the rhetoric on one side and the other, and served as a trigger for the drastic setback in bilateral relations and the successive sanctions of the Trump administration against Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n

What at first officials and the media considered the result of <\/span>\u201csonic attacks\u201d<\/span><\/a> has since gone through various explanations as the cause of a collection of symptoms that includes dizziness, nausea, hearing loss, migraine, brain injuries, anxiety and fatigue, among others. Such symptoms, although not described as a homogeneous group in all those presumably affected, have been gathered under the label \u201c<\/span>Havana Syndrome<\/span><\/a>,\u201d of indisputable media effect and named after the first place where the strange incidents were reported.<\/span><\/p>\n

Microwaves \u2014 and, above all, a possible weapon with this technology \u2014 are the most mentioned perpetrators in recent times, even handled at the end of 2020 as the \u201cmost plausible mechanism\u201d in a report by the United States Academies of Science, which, however, recognized that \u201cevery possible cause remains within a speculative context.\u201d Something that could be said, at least for the time being, of the rest of the theories.<\/span><\/p>\n

Academia de Ciencias de Cuba discrepa de nuevo informe de EEUU sobre incidentes de salud en diplom\u00e1ticos<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n