But when people are truly sinking, because of job loss, illness, debt or some combination of ills, they have no idea what mix of character, connections and dumb luck will be enough to pull through.
The same combination of ills that catalyzed the revolution remains -- poverty, joblessness, disgust over corruption and anger over human rights violations -- yet the public yearning for stability appears to be the paramount concern.
Some effort will be made to dismiss this drubbing as a combination of ill-fortune and aberrations that the side will not repeat.
Campaigners say the combination of ill-informed foodies trampling protected areas and commercial foragers supplying restaurants are damaging a delicate eco-system.
The Scot returned from his ban in 2006 to become one of the sport's leading anti-doping campaigners, eventually retiring in 2014 after Garmin-Sharp withdrew him from the Tour de France through a combination of ill-health and poor form.
We have already seen how a combination of ill-thought-out rule changes and intemperate rhetoric has significantly reduced the number of young people coming to study in the UK from India, reducing both economic growth and the supply of skilled labour.
Neither minister's resignation was directly related to the dissidents' complaints: Ross resigned over disagreements with Aberhart on oil policy, while Cockroft left over a combination of ill health, clashes with Aberhart over the issue of a federal-provincial loan council, government investment policies, and Aberhart's approach to patronage.
This one turned late in the second period via a combination of ill-advised penalties and a costly giveaway by Kings captain Dustin Brown, leading to Jared McCann's go-ahead goal, an unassisted breakaway with 33 seconds left in the period.
The accumulation is a combination of ill-demarcated zones of CD45-positive lymphocytes, CD3-positive lymphocytes and CD45/CD3-negative F4/80-negative or CD45/CD3-negative F4/80 weakly positive macrophage-like cells (Fig. 4).
This suggested that this patient had an uncommon combination of two ills not previously connected: the sleep disorder narcolepsy and a neuronal degeneration issue of unknown cause affecting the cerebellum and hearing.
You couldn't have been held guilty of expecting a tight game, but a combination of an ill timed Clayton Kershaw meltdown, Yasiel Puig fielding miscues, Michael Wacha pitching, and some tremendous Cardinals hitting, bats that finally came alive, means there was no repeat of the 2012 NLCS collapse for these Redbirds.
