Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
JOB NOW ANYTHING BUT CUSHY
‘Dall change for Saffron talisman in battle against coronavirus
A VACCINE is ultimately what will set us all free, and Antrim’s Neil Mcmanus is doing his bit to move that process along.
Every morning, Mcmanus is up and on the road to Belfast from his home in Cushendall and while COVID-19 has caused many people’s employment to grind to halt, the 31-year-old has never been busier.
“It’s a really good challenge,” he says. “I am putting in more hours now than I’ve ever done before but it’s kind of ok because I’m not travelling to a different club each night for training sessions.
“It’s a good opportunity for me to learn at the higher pressure end of the game and it keeps me in some sort of routine.”
Mcmanus works for Andor Technology as a value stream manager and one of the company’s specialities is producing scientific digital cameras, which are very much in demand as scientists the world over scramble to produce a vaccine.
“A lot of the cameras that we’re making are actually being used in labs all over the world to try and find a vaccine for COVID-19 so that’s why I’m still at work every day. “They’re more a light-measuring solution than a camera, as such. “Physical sciences is the bit where people use cameras on the end of telescopes and things like that to look for new stars, new galaxies and that. “Then the life sciences is where the cameras are used to try and find out more about cells, about say COVID-19 or a form of cancer. See how different cells mutate and things like that so you can try and find antibodies. That’s why there’s been such a growth in the life sciences side of the business.
“A lot of the customers that we deal with, that would be part of their business at the minute, because everybody wants to come up with a vaccine.”
But while a record pace is being set in developing one, the scale of the logistics that go with it draws caution from Mcmanus.
“There are six billion people on
ON BORIS: He made an absolute hames of it. He put the economy in front of the people.. ON CUSHENDALL: We’re spoilt for walks and views and getting into the sea every day for a swim..
the planet. If a vaccine is here, how long is it going to take to give the vaccine to everybody? It’ll take years really, if we’re honest. I don’t see things changing massively any time soon.”
Containing the coronavirus on this island isn’t made any easier by the fact that there are two different jurisdictions, with the respective governments moving at varying speeds.
Mcmanus insists that the only approach is an all-island one.
However, not even the worst global pandemic in a century has been enough to stifle political opportunism from some on both sides of the divide in the north.
“Not only can they not see past their political beliefs, shall we say, they are going out to use the situation as an opportunity to keep the six counties in the north separate from the south.
“How can you treat Derry and
Donegal differently? Or Armagh and Monaghan? It just doesn’t make sense.
“This has to be done on an all-island basis. There’s no other way around it. There just isn’t.” If there’s anything that unites all in the north right now, according to Mcmanus (right), it’s Boris Johnson, a man not revered on either side of the political divide” and who has “made an absolute hames of it”. He adds: “He put the economy in front of the people that he governs but the Stormont executive don’t have full powers.
“They do have to wait at times on Westminster which is extremely frustrating but the good thing is, a lot of the businesses here in the north and schools in the north had been already shut down before Boris Johnson gave the ok. They just followed the lead from Dublin.”
But if there’s one thing that Mcmanus is grateful for these days, it’s the decision he and his wife, Aileen, made to relocate from Belfast to his Cushendall, the picturesque coastal village providing the perfect antidote to the doom and gloom.
“I’m absolutely blessed. It’s not until you’re kept in your own environment that you realise how spoilt you are. “People are living in bigger cities without anywhere really to go. In Cushendall, in the glens of Antrim, we’re spoilt for walks and views and getting into the sea every day for a swim.”