They seem to be dropping like flies over there. Is it a good idea for anyone who was on good terms with any of them to reach out and see if they have any interest in participating?
They’re probably all bound by NDAs, (though I’m sure they can be worked around) - it also appears likely that coming on board may be therapeutic. 
Thoughts?
I’m not so sure — these are people whose main thought right now might be about putting food on the table for their families or paying their rent.
It’s not that I don’t think they might be interested after they have found jobs and settled down again, just that perhaps they should be left in peace to do that first, and what they really need from us right now might be sympathy and encouragement.
In 6-8 weeks maybe…
I don’t know anyone personally to reach out to, but I left a comment here pointing to Codidact to make people aware. It has already garnered some upvotes.
Someone already tried to recruit Shog to Codidact on Twitter. However, I would suspect that all of these people are going to want to settle on their new job before engaging in open source projects. And they are likely already aware of Codidact.
Those types of comments are how I found this project.
It may have been that specific comment that brought me here yesterday. So, it worked, at least for n=1 
A bunch of people commented on or answered my question with a link to here. I decided to make an account.
It is, from what I’ve seen, starting to spread a good bit.
Welcome! As you’ve seen, this forum is where we’re having the discussions about what to build and (somewhat) how to build it. See https://codidact.org/ for an introduction including links to the GitHub repository, the wiki, and the Discord chat room.
'Preciate the welcome. Looking forward to contributing here once some communities start showing up!