Reading Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, and I come across this:

It must be confessed that though the plague was chiefly among the poor, yet were the poor the most venturous and fearless of it, and went about their employment with a sort of brutal courage; I must call it so, for it was founded neither on religion or prudence; scarce did they use any caution, but run into any business which they could get employment in, though it was the most hazardous. Such was that of tending the sick, watching houses shut up, carrying infected persons to the pest-house, and, which was still worse, carrying the dead away to their graves.

In Defoe's time, as in ours, economic desperation can motivate people to risk their lives; they walk a narrow precipice, and calamity, whether epidemiological or economical, awaits on either side, should they slip

The more things change, the more they stay the same.