IN lockdown days unfold and seem to be looking exactly the same. We wake up at fixed hours, get some work done, cook meals, call friends and family. Then, we are reminded that we are not alone: we have hundreds of people around us experiencing the same feeling of living on a remote, desert island.

The usually silent street and discreet neighbours get to their windows to clap and bang pans. “Come on, it’s 8pm, time to make some noise,” my husband always says, while my teenage sister, who is staying with us while she’s studying, and I join him at the window to thank our health service, our carers and all our essential workers who are on the frontline every day, saving lives, keeping us fed, safe and healthy.

As the end of this period of strict lockdown approaches, there are fewer and fewer of us at the window every day, but we still enjoy waving and smiling at the two girls with their dog who live opposite and the retired couple I am secretly jealous of, who clap from their rooftop. Maybe, at the end of it, we will meet in person to have a socially distanced chat for the first time.

I have always felt very lucky in life. I come from a working-class background but I have never had to worry about having food on my table. I have struggled with money but never faced the prospect of being homeless and losing everything. I have always been healthy and never experienced the turmoil of physical or psychological pain. But experiencing lockdown in Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest département in mainland France and the second most densely populated in the Paris region, where I live when I am not in Edinburgh, has made me even more acutely aware of my privilege.

Especially because I am the embodiment of gentrification: a young professional who couldn’t afford living comfortably in Paris, and chose the suburbs for bigger, cheaper accommodation. The flat is nice and bright, and we can all work in different rooms if we want to. As someone who has completely embraced the còsagach lifestyle, staying at home with two people I love and have the best time with has been very easy. I know this is far from being everyone’s experience.

In le 93 (93 is the number of the département), where 27% of the population lives under the poverty line, coronavirus has been particularly decimating. Many inhabitants are frontline workers such as nurses, customer assistants in supermarkets, refuse collectors, meaning they are exposed to the virus and too often without the adequate equipment. Many people live in small, overcrowded flats, with children who need home-schooling but whose parents can’t necessarily help.

Worryingly, the département has suffered from chronic underfunding for health services, as several socialist and communist mayors and council presidents denounced in a column in Le Monde newspaper.

Compared to Paris, there are three times fewer ICU beds here and fewer doctors available. “It is true that today, inequalities kill in Seine-Saint-Denis,” they write bluntly. “We will need to tackle these profound injustices, that nobody can choose to ignore, head-on with acts.” Even President Emmanuel Macron, whose fiscal measures have been proven to advantage the 5% richest in France while penalising the 5% poorest, acknowledged that “we will need to remember that today, our country entirely relies on women and men who are undervalued and underpaid in our economies”.

Seine-Saint-Denis, probably the most racially diverse département in France, is often talked about as a problem to solve: it is too poor, too dangerous, too uneducated, mainly consisting of no-go zones, as a British journalist said in 2015.

Police violence is not a rare occurence here and it seems to have worsened during the lockdown. The town of Aubervilliers saw a particularly shocking example with what Ramatoulaye, a 19-year-old mother, experienced at the start of the lockdown in March. She was walking back home from the shop where she bought milk for her newborn baby, accompanied by her seven-year-old brother. She had the document we all need to carry to prove we had a good reason to be away from home and avoid a €135 fine, but the police officers who controlled her insisted on giving her a fine.

After resisting, they profusely insulted her, Tasered her, tackled her on the ground and took her to the nearest station. As a result, Ramatoulaye was unable to work for five days due to her injuries. This left people wondering why so much brutal police intervention was happening in the suburbs, while things seemed more relaxed in Paris, as the gathering of dozens of lockdown-weary Parisians to dance in the street showed. The police intervened to send everyone home without a single fine, or indeed a Taser shot, being issued. Lockdown looks very different depending who you are, where you live, what you do for a living. I am personally surrounded by people who have a very different experience from mine. My mother, who lives in a rural town in the centre of the country, works in the local hospital as a nurse.

At first, the hospital and the town’s care home were relatively spared by coronavirus. But the situation rapidly evolved, despite the remarkable organisation of the region’s health services. As in the UK, some concerns have been raised about the lack of PPE and testing, as well as the psychological pressure on health workers. It breaks my heart to think that I won’t be able to go visit her for a while, as trips over 100km from your place of residence will be banned for at least another three weeks. This is also the case of my friends back in Edinburgh who have family in France. They won’t be able to visit their loved ones in the foreseeable futures.

At the start of the lockdown, an estimated 1.2 million people left the Paris region to stay in secondary homes or live with relatives away from crowded cities, prompting fears of the virus spreading uncontrollably.

Although the majority of them seemed to be middle-class folks who could have had a safe lockdown in vast and well equipped appartments, others had a very good reason to leave. I am thinking of a dear friend of mine who lived on her own in a small flat, and who had been told by her GP to shield herself as much as possible due to underlying health issues. It didn’t prevent her from being targeted with unpleasant remarks and backlash when she went to her mother’s house in her childhood village. People were very quick to judge without any idea of circumstances.

In this ocean of bad news, there is, however, some hope. While many employers in France were extremely reluctant to implement remote working, the lockdown is forcing them to reconsider. Like many people who try to change their consuming habits, I am supporting local businesses by buying my groceries from local suppliers instead of going to the supermarket all the time.

The level of solidarity that everyone is displaying by bringing food to vulnerable people, donating to causes, and just reinventing social connections with those who have to go through all of this on their own, is a daily reminder that not everything is absolutely terrible. I hope none of this disappears when we exit our crisis mode.

As crucial as individual acts of kindness and demonstrations of our appreciation of essential workers may be, they won’t be enough to heal our wounds. Nobody holds the answer to what the world will look like when the pandemic ends, hopefully sooner than later, but I find it interesting how ideas that were deemed too radical, too crazy, are now being discussed as legitimate suggestions for reducing inequalities, living in a cleaner world, and ultimately leading happier lives. Will a universal basic income see the light of day in the next few years? Will governments realise the economy should work for us, not the other way round, as if it was some shapeless demigod which demanded our constant sweat and sacrifices? This may be too optimistic, but I am convinced that now is the time to think differently. If not now, when ?