I don't know what this xz thing is about, first time hearing it. But people saying he should get more help are trying to help him, not having malicious plans like installing backdoors or whatever.
I do think people should ask less for more maintainers — the project is already opensource, so it's up to maintainers to join, not him to seek them out. But he should still get some help with managing the instance. Pauses in development are fine imo, but the instance shouldn't be swarmed with spam and account deletion requests lost in limbo just because ernest got sick or something, which can happen with the best work life balances.