American Victims of Sonic 'Health Attacks' in China Suspect a Conspiracy Cover-Up

It sounds like the beginning of a Cold War political thriller or a Black Mirror episode: according to NBC , over a dozen Americans stationed in China for diplomatic and government work were recently evacuated for medical testing after reporting that they heard strange noises and felt vibrations that caused them to vomit, forget words, and have trouble concentrating. The strange signals always seemed to come from the same direction, and only happen in their homes or hotel rooms. After being tested, many were found to have neurological damage that doesn't look like any other disorder. Now, according to those affected, the US government is trying to downplay the whole thing.According to NBC, it's a tangled tale of government bureaucracy, medical ambiguities, and international conspiracies. The most striking piece of information, however, is that all of this has happened before: in 2016, 26 government employees were evacuated from the US embassy in Havana in 2016 after experiencing identical phenomena and medical problems. After being treated, the individuals received a letter notifying them that they had been the victim of a crime, but the culprits were never identified. A new test was created to identify the disorder created by the strange noises and vibrations: the HABIT test, which stands for Havana Acquired Brain Injury Tool.In the aftermath of the evacuation, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan affirmed that the danger was real: "Any suggestion that this is some sort of mass hysteria is simply counterfactual, and the medical community, every doctor I've spoken to about this is unanimous. It's real. It happened. And that's the set of facts."The HABIT test was administered to multiple members of the US embassy in China, including diplomat Catherine Werner and her mother Laura Hughes, the latter of which began exhibiting similar symptoms when she visited her daughter in China. All of those who failed the test were evacuated to a medical facility in Pennsylvania, where they were studied further. Though all are receiving care and compensation, many of the patients are being kept in the dark about the truth of what happened...and their own diagnoses.At least one physician who treated the American patients from China said that some were "cleared" despite matching the symptoms of the Havana cases. Meanwhile, the US government has dragged its feet on declaring that the "attacks" were politically motivated, or that there was a conspiracy to harm Americans in China. According to one of the doctors at the Pennsylvania facility, microwave weapons are suspected to be the cause of the disorders, and Russian agents were thought to be behind the attacks.Though it sounds like a tinfoil hat story, it seems that it's nonetheless real. You can read the full story here