The regulatory environment is not kind to short sellers.
Matt Levine's Money Stuff often has examples of how shorting can go wrong. Recently there was a company that was accused of fraud. An obvious target for shorting. But: once the fraud properly came to light, the authorities promptly halted trading in the company's stock. After trading was halted, the shortsellers could not cover their shorts.
And of course, in order to shortsell, you always need someone willing to lend you the stock in the first place.
In the case of Hertz, https://fintel.io/ss/us/htz does suggest that plenty of shortselling is going on. But https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-bankrupt-hertz-short-sque... suggests that finding Hertz stock to borrow became harder over time.
Case: Bear Sterns, AIG, GS
See eg https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-hedgef...