Chicks who are positioned the opposite way can still hatch but may be in more need to help. However if they have an air hole they should be fine until the others hatch normally and then you can help.
Alternatively you can introduce a lot of steam to the area outside the incubator. This could mean bringing the incubator to the bathroom and running a hot shower. Or it could mean bringing pots of boiling water or teakettles in to the room to humidify the air (or run a humidifier.)
The liquid that you are seeing can be normal, but it could also mean the chick is aspirating "goo." This is more common (and deadly) in duck eggs than chicken eggs but chicken eggs still have them. The downside to hand turning the eggs (speaking as someone who did that due to space concerns rather than using the turner which would cut down how many eggs I could incubate) is it doesn't seem to really tackle the goo issue as well as turning.
For example, flipping an egg over does give it the 180* turn, and I would do that 5+ times a day most days. Versus when I finally got enough extra incubator space and ran the incubators turning trays once an hour, there really does seem to be something about the rotation. Not just more often (also important, supposedly a hen rotates her eggs constantly, like 2 dozen times a day or more) but also rotating rather than flipping.
I was very hands on with my first few hatches, and I don't necessarily regret that because a) I started without an incubator and had successful hatches, b) I did kill some eggs/chicks and learned, c) all the other stuff I learned that I don't feel like writing out.
The fear of shrink wrapping, for me, did more harm than actually dealing with shrink wrapping which was completely manageable. You will lost chicks sometimes and it is very much a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. So just understand, whether you assist or not, there's a good chance someone will not hatch, or they'll die soon after hatching and you have to know that yes, sometimes you chose the wrong avenue, or sometimes a chick was going to die whether assisted or not. Just don't beat yourself up about it too much.
For example, I was getting some fertile duck eggs, 1-3 eggs at a time, from a neighbor who's had ducks for years and was interested in ducklings but largely used the eggs for food. I kept trying and failing hatching these ducklings. It got to the point where I had one die on day 21 (of 28 days for this type of duck) and another one died on day 25. And I kept kicking myself thinking I was doing something wrong.
And then I thought to ask (knowing she seemed knowledgeable, and that she wanted ducklings) if she had been feeding her ducks breeder feed. There's egg laying feed and then there's breeder feed. And she didn't know breeder feed was a thing. So I had a bunch of fertile eggs, yes, that conceivably could hatch, but the mothers did not have the nutrition to really have eggs that would get the ducklings the best chances of hatching.
This is all a very long winded way of saying, do or not not assist. You'll help and hurt either way and you have to choose the option that you'll feel the least bad about yourself. I noticed a lot of people say "Nature knows best" and has a hands off approach and I think it's just easiest on their conscience (no judgement. Totally valid.) but there's plenty of people who assist and show chickens and ducklings who appear to be completely healthy and maybe just had bad luck to have an extra thick eggshell, or didn't get their egg position perfect, or was in a slightly too hot or two cold section of an incubator (always rotate egg positions in an incubator. Learned that the hard way.)
but hopefully I’ll be able to see more by tomorrow.
