
The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome - dbuxton
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/19/the-mystery-of-the-havana-syndrome
======
LeifCarrotson
> The name is a pseudonym, which she requested in order to protect her
> privacy.) Her life in Havana was fascinating but orderly. She lived with her
> husband and their twelve-year-old twins

This is the problem with "anonymizing" a person by just changing their name,
or exchanging a name in a database with a number.

There's a pretty high probability that the number of FSI agents in Havana with
12-year-old twins is precisely one. We already know she works in the embassy
in Havana, which means she's one of a couple hundred people, she's female,
which cuts that number in half, she has twins, which cuts that number by about
100.

~~~
throwawaymath
Yeah, that's interesting.

We start with approximately 33 bits needed to uniquely identify her. She lives
in Havana, which immediately slices 11 bits from our search space (the
population of Havana is around 2.13 million, or ~2^21). She's female, so we
can roughly cut our population in half again; now we're only at 20 bits.

She worked in the Havana embassy in 2017 and was one of the people impacted by
the strange health issues. There were about 24 people impacted (insofar as I
can quickly find online), which means she must be one of these 24 people.
Assuming all of the other 23 are also female, now there are only 4 bits
remaining (24 = 2^4.58).

Finally, she has twin 12 year old children. We'll have to make a few fuzzy
assumptions here, but given 1) a birth rate of ~1.5 per female per year, 2) a
world female population of ~3,232,000,000 in 2005, and 3) a chance of having
twins at about 3.33%, she is most likely in a set of about 159,984,000. This
is only about 27 bits, which means we get a little over a 5 bit reduction by
placing her in this set. That gives us the last 4 bits we need.

This is all assuming that the information given in this article is correct and
the foregoing estimates are comparable to the real world statistics. This is a
little fuzzy because I'm not sure if she's actually Cuban or American (and
therefore where she was in 2005, or which estimates to use for calculating
twin and birth rate statistics).

~~~
richardbdrowley
She doesn't live in Havana anymore.

~~~
throwawaymath
Well actually between having worked in the embassy and having twins in 2005,
there are still theoretically enough bits to uniquely identify her. Knowing
where she lives just bolsters the selection a bit.

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molticrystal
They said it wasn't likely a toxin, or at least there were no toxins that
screening picked up on. But could some other fungus/mold or other pathogen
infect the people there or could they accumulate a toxin that wasn't screened
for? Just how clean did they get and keep that place at?

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ashleyn
Is it just me or does it seem this would be trivial to detect with tangible
proof? One or several software-defined radios can be set up to listen to the
full breadth of the radio spectrum. If an incident like this is ever reported
again, correlate the waterfall view with the time of the incident, and see if
there were any increases in activity in that period. I currently believe this
was a mass hysteria.

~~~
seventytwo
It's not trivial. Beams could be narrow and could only be on for short periods
of time. Combine that with all kinds of noise, stray signals, and other false
positives, and you'd still be searching for a needle in a haystack. It's not
clear what frequency to even look for...

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empath75
I would be stunned to discover that this is anything other than a case of mass
hysteria.

Psychosomatic symptoms are still symptoms and stress and anxiety can cause
physical changes to the body and brain and long lasting effects.

~~~
tim333
Dunno though. From the article:

>But their skepticism vanished when they saw the patients. “There was not one
individual on the team who was not convinced that this was a real thing,”
Smith said.

and from another article:
([https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180829115456.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180829115456.htm))

>"We have seen this before when the Soviets irradiated the U.S. Embassy in
Moscow in the days of the Cold War," he said.

So the Soviets / Russians have form and the symptoms fit. There was also a van
seen which could have had the gear:

>...looked outside her home after hearing the disturbing sounds and seen a van
speeding away. ([https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/science/sonic-attack-
cuba...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/science/sonic-attack-cuba-
microwave.html))

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warent
I'm an American going to Havana tomorrow until Friday. Here's to hoping my
head doesn't get long-range microwaved...?

~~~
dgut
As an American, Cuba is probably the safest place you can visit in LA.

~~~
gnulinux
What about Costa Rica, Uruguay, Chile..? I think Cuba is pretty safe but it's
not the only safe country in LA.

------
owenmarshall
So the first “victims” were CIA officers, and the CIA the first to start
pushing to close the embassy and return to the status quo developed and
favored by the CIA for decades.

No evidence exists to suggest anything actually happened to the victims, and
what limited scientific evidence does exist is being criticized.

And all of this just happened to directly support the official hard line
position taken by the new US government.

What a remarkable set of coincidences!

~~~
wizzard
Did you read the article? If you did then you’re being purposely misleading
about what you read. The article was about the many non-CIA officers affected.
There is plenty of evidence of brain injury, just no evidence of how it
happened or what agent(s) caused it. And how about the coincidence that the
hard line position of the new US government lines up perfectly with the
desires of hard line Cubans, Russia, and China. You insinuate that the new
administration is the only group of people in the world interested in
scuttling normalization.

~~~
owenmarshall
> There is plenty of evidence of brain injury

>> In fact, aside from the victims’ accounts, there was no conclusive evidence
that anyone in Cuba was attacked at all.

>> an investigation carried out by Canada and Cuba has thus far found no
evidence of attacks.

>> After the study was published, JAMA received letters from other
specialists, arguing that the study was flawed, especially in neglecting
psychological explanations.

>> "After a year and a half, the most powerful nation on earth hasn’t been
able to present one single piece of evidence"

>> But he acknowledged that more data were needed to convince skeptics that
the syndrome was real. He said his team was awaiting “potential tangible
evidence” from a new neuroimaging study involving the victims.

> You insinuate that the new administration is the only group of people in the
> world interested in scuttling normalization

Sure, plenty of other parties interested in stopping the normalization of
relationships exist. But their state intelligence agents aren't the ones
claiming injury from a mysterious attack that no one seems to be able to prove
happened.

> The article was about the many non-CIA officers affected.

Psychosomatic illnesses are a real thing. They can cause real and serious
impact to people's health.

A psychosomatic illness arising after the stress of living and working in a
country that has been "the enemy" for six decades, after being told that you
will be under "constant surveillance by Cuban intelligence", after their
intelligence agents make it clear to you that you're under surveillance? After
three agents of your state intelligence suddenly come down with a mysterious,
unexplainable illness? Seems entirely plausible to me.

~~~
richardbdrowley
And what about the people who suffered this without any prior warning?

