Tuesday, December 15, 2020

It’s Not What You Have but What You Do with It that Matters

 

It’s pretty much agreed by most martial arts fans that Kung Fu legend, Bruce Lee was a mean son of a bitch that you would not want to piss off. The guy could do serious damage to you before you had time to blink and there were plenty of urban legends of his great physical prowess.

What made Bruce Lee particularly interesting was the fact that he was tinny, in fact he was a puny little man who was short sighted to the point of being blind without visual aids and one of his legs was actually shorter than the other. So, how did such a “weakling” develop a reputation for being a fearsome fighter (although Bruce Lee never fought in a competitive arena, top American fighters like Joe Lewis actually came to learn from him)?

In many ways, Bruce Lee became what he became not because of what he had but what he did with it. He was short sighted, so he studied a combat style designed for very close quarter combat (he would have been helpless at Tae Kwon Do). Since one leg was shorter than the other, he used that to develop a lethal side kick. He was skinny, so he developed himself for sheer speed rather than brute power. More interestingly, behind all the “martial arts,” he was quite open to using every trick available to finish the fight. As shown in one of the more prominent fight scenes against a larger and stronger opponent in the movie “Fist of Furry,” he actually bit the guy to get out of a jam. There is also a video clip of a lesson where he tells his students they should bite the guy if they’re ever trapped in a headlock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5LJeE-b2Sw

 

I bring up Bruce Lee and his willingness to bite and gouge people during a fight because his life example is more relevant than ever. If you look at the world through the lenses of the Covid-19 pandemic, you will notice that some of the great success of Covid-19 are countries that should not be successful and if you look at the countries that have failed miserably, they’re countries that should have been able to swat away the virus.

The top of the class in failing is the USA. At the time of writing, the USA has by far and away the highest infection rates with 16,777,408 infections and 306,706 fatalities. To put that into perspective, the only military conflict that has killed more Americans is World War II, which 405,399 people in the space of three years.

Whatever your political views, these statistics should be shocking, particularly when you consider the fact that this is the USA or the world’s most powerful country in just about every sense of the word. The US has by far and away the most powerful military machine, its economy remains the most dominant and American universities have produced some of the best brains in history. The US is a medical powerhouse. Just about every breakthrough in science comes out of an American laboratory.

So, when you look at it this way, America should not under any circumstances be compared to the likes of India and Brazil, which despite their size, remain what Donald Trump so eloquently called “shitholes.” India may have produced lots of managers and IT professionals but it also remains cast ridden and backwards in so many ways – or at least been in such a state that highly intelligent managers and IT professionals produced in India have chosen to stay outside at the first chance. The same can be pretty much said about Brazil. Just look at Brazil’s abundance of soccer talent which is parked outside Brazil for a good reason.

To be fair to the USA, it’s not the only country to make a mess of its Covid-19 response. The rich European nations like France, Italy and the UK have seen a high rate of infection and death. Even Germany, which had kept its death rate relatively low has been forced into imposing a second lock down.

By contrast, some of the interesting success stories have been found in the world’s backwaters. Vietnam was a notable success story. At the time of writing, Vietnam has seen 1,402 cases and 35 deaths. Vietnam is not a small city state like Singapore. It as a population of 90 plus million and its infrastructure is to be charitably, not great (though it has improved remarkably).

Another success story is Bhutan, which at the time of writing has seen a grand total of 438 cases. Let’s remember that behind Bhutan’s image of the land of smiles and Gross National Happiness, it looks to India for development assistance, which should give you an idea of the healthcare infrastructure in Bhutan.

So, what is happening here. It would seem quite obvious that the countries that are rich and strong are perhaps getting complacent about what they have and somehow not finding the ability to do what needs to be done.

By contrast, the smaller, weaker nations with so much less have been forced to do things with what little that is available to them. I remember very clearly that Vietnam had placed thermal scanner at the airport and insisted in mask wearing in public while Singapore was still bickering about the need to wear mask. Let’s remember Singapore competes for medical tourism, while Vietnam does not. The Vietnamese government understood that prevention was better than the cure and acted to keep people needing the health system rather than waiting for it to be overstrained.

Look at how countries have performed in managing Covid-19 and you can take courage that there is a saying that those who aren’t given much are sometimes quite blessed.  

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Maira Gall