"Blinken has long doubted that personnel are suffering from mass hysteria or some psychogenic event, officials have said. Previous investigations, notably by the FBI, had raised the possibility that the symptoms had a psychological origin, not a physical one, outraging many sufferers who felt their pain had been marginalized and their claims not taken seriously by medical personnel. Experts have emphasized that even if the illnesses were psychogenic, that doesn’t mean sufferers are imagining their symptoms."

I think therein lies part of the problem: it has to either be caused by secret weapons, or mass hysteria. The same kind of outdated thinking is what has caused the dualistic thinking that we see in ME/CFS and longcovid.