Two things that are paralyzing enormous numbers of potential helpers: fear of not having permission, liability, etc fear of duplicating effort from not knowing who is working on what
in a fast moving crisis, sufficient confidence about either is always lagging the frontline.
First you have to solve this problem for yourself in order to get enough confidence to act. Something neglected might be to focus on solving it for others rather than just working on object level medical stuff (bottlenecks etc.)
I'd expand the "duplicating effort" into "not knowing the risk nor reward of any specific action. I think most agree that duplicate help efforts are better than duplicate Netflix show watches. But what to actually do instead is a mystery for many of us.
A whole lot of nerds are looking for ways to massively help, with a fairly small effort/risk for themselves. That probably doesn't exist. You're not the hero in a book, your contribution isn't going to fix this (exceptions abound - if you have an expertise or path to h... (read more)
For the first, don't think in terms of the US and its suicidal litigiousness. Think Iran, think rural hospitals, think what people will do if someone is dying at home and no hospital will take them.