Red, maybe orange but yellow makes no sense. My county is yellow on that map and right now we have 18 people in hospitals with Covid zero on ventilators. In Jan we were close to 800 people hospitalized for comparison. However, that being said once this is announced most people around me will likely go back to masks either way. It’s over 50/50 in stores and in public already.
That's why I said I expect Orange and Yellow to both have a lot of nuance around them. The Red and Blue recommendations are probably really easy.
It could be something like "Vaccinated people at elevated risk in Yellow".
It could be something like "When moving from Red to Orange, not until it's been Orange for 7 days in a row".
It could be something like "When moving from Orange to Red, not until it's been Red for 2 days in a row".
It could be something like "Yellow when fully vaccinated percent is also below XX%".
With just 4 categories, there's lots of room for additional conditions to create nuance, ramp up, ramp down, in the middle conditions.
I think we can all guess that the strongest recommendation is going to be in Red, High Transmission areas, probably independent of vaccinated percentage.
If nothing else, it shows they're trying to find a direction that matches the conditions in the area instead of a one size fits all.
Just like the last change to guidance, it'll be the policy outcomes and actual behavior on the ground that matters. There's already a ton of people (mostly unvaccinated) not following the existing guidance. Having different guidance may not matter if nobody is going to follow it.
We just have to wait for the actual announcement, and then the policy announcements based on that guidance.