I'm not saying that Teary theorically skipping to 0.1 would be a good idea or justify anything else.Why this is cope is simple: He's given no other lifesigns (posts to the community) saying as such.
Why wouldn't he justify further his delay by saying "yea I'm working on 0.1 at this point", when it would only help him to say so?
In lack of him saying anything, we have to assume the most simple explanation: He's insanely procrastinating on updating anything, and too ashamed / too exit-scam-y to answer back to the community.
"Why wouldn't he justify further his delay by saying it?" Yeah, why wouldn't he indeed. It'd make some sense to do so *even if he wasn't working on it*. It'd make more sense to say something in just about every imaginable scenario. Teary having a bizarrely bad communication strategy is something that we already need to assume, you can't read much more into it.
I mean to be clear full procrastination is a possibility too. Doubt that it's an exit scam, but in any case it's shitty enough for the patreons to the point where the distinction doesn't really matter.