Yesterday North Carolina’s powerful Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger sent a fundraising email to his supporters. The subject line? “CDC issues new guidelines to ignore.”

Berger’s message came a day after the Center for Disease Control updated its mask recommendations in the face of an alarming spike in COVID infections, suggesting among other things that vaccinated people wear masks “in public indoor settings in areas of substantial or high transmission” of the virus.

The same day Berger encouraged North Carolinians to ignore mask guidance, 2,633 new cases and a percent positivity rate of 10.8 were reported for the state–the highest number of cases in a single day since February.

Berger’s email suggested that masking guidelines should be treated with the same disregard as recommendations against eating raw cookie dough.

As of Wednesday COVID had killed 611,708 people in the United States.

I was unable to find data on the number of deaths from raw cookie dough.