How do you say the current rate is much lower? By your definiton everyone on Earth still is at work to respond to their home being set on fire, but now many people are also on call to respond to a shopping website being mildly inconveniently down at a time most people are asleep, in a system which is abusively, inhumanely, choosing to define that as an "emergency" and choosing to make that happen as often as possible by squeezing design and engineering and planning resources, because both of those choices (uptime, and fast development) are more profitable, and screw the human factor.
It's a totally different scenario.
Even in situations where there are lives at risk, medical systems, or power grid control, there are plenty of options for planning in advance, for redundancy, for employing people in different time zones. When a peasant has to respond to their house burning, they're motivated to put the candles out before going to bed. When a peasant has to respond to their email system being down, but they're not allowed to allocate more time or money to fix it, that's worse.
It's a totally different scenario.
Even in situations where there are lives at risk, medical systems, or power grid control, there are plenty of options for planning in advance, for redundancy, for employing people in different time zones. When a peasant has to respond to their house burning, they're motivated to put the candles out before going to bed. When a peasant has to respond to their email system being down, but they're not allowed to allocate more time or money to fix it, that's worse.