California Governor Gavin Newsom's office has decided to lift the orders as ICU availability in the regions that remained under the stay-at-home order, including the Bay area and Southern California are projected to rise above the 15% threshold that triggered the lockdown measures, according https://bit.ly/3sSPOfp to San Francisco Chronicle.
According to the report, counties will move back to the tiered system, with most regions across the state expected to move into the purple tier, meaning personal care services like hair salons can re-open with modifications and restaurants can open for outdoor service.
My read was that they're making up the response as they go, not making up the existence of new strains
Hmm, maybe, but I'm not so sure about that. I have been dealing a lot with the people thinking it's a hoax or blown out of proportion in order to control society, though, so I'm definitely primed by now to interpret it that way.
"to keep people in a state of panic" makes me think that they're subscribing to the social control hoax conspiracy theory. The people that believe it's all a hoax, and whenever the public starts to figure it out, they have to invent new details in order to keep us subservient and fearful.