What was life like in cities affected by a plague?

by coconutnuts

I was wondering how a plague or an outbreak of a contagious disease affected a city.

By this I mean for example:

Did many people stay in cities or was there a huge flight?
What steps were undertaken to minimize casualties?
Did the government or ruling class stay in the city? Was there some semblance of a function government during the crisis?
Did the Church or another religious organization offer aid?
How was trade and commerce affected?
Are there any accounts of how "regular", poor, people coped with the plague?
What did they do with the dead?

In general really anything you could tell me about how cities fared during a plague or interesting historical accounts you came across would be very appreciated!

It has been a few years since I read it and I don't think I ever quite finished it either so I can't give a full rundown, but a really good "primary source" I'd highly recommend for this is A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe published in 1722. It's technically fiction but it's probably closely based on an account from Defoe's uncle who lived through the 1666 plague outbreak in London. It's something I actually really want to finish and read again more closely sometime because it's very interesting and detailed and gives a very realistic seeming "firsthand" account of what it was like to be in a city overrun with the plague. It describes how some people fled the city while others stayed and what it was like venturing through the streets at the height of the plague with unburied dead bodies on the side of the road, and it even goes into the psychological reactions different people had to being infected, with some becoming hedonistic and even violent while others gave up or became more pious. It also talks about various quack doctors who sprang up with "cures" to take advantage of the situation.