You Know the Daily Aspirin the Feds Told Us Old Folks to Take? Well, Stop It! That’s Bad for You Now – RedState

Damn!

Here they are again: federal experts change their mind about more guidelines for health. Masks, no masks, two weeks of lock-down, well, no, maybe two months, yada yada yada. How can anyone keep up, especially if they’re old and feeble like our current president?

This time the new federal advice is about aspirin, the world’s most widely-used drug that made Bayer a household name after its invention in 1897. You know how, based on a 2016 recommendation, you should be taking one low-dose aspirin tablet a day to prevent heart disease, the nation’s and even the world’s top killer? According to estimates, around 30 million Americans take one per day.

Well, forget it. A government-backed advisory board just opened public comment on a proposed advice change to say that we shouldn’t be doing what we were told we should be doing for almost the last decade.

Remember they changed the food pyramid earlier this century from what we’d been told was best to eat from way back in the middle of the last century? That’s when federal experts told some of us of a young age the best foods to eat for a long, happy, and healthy life. Michelle Obama changed the school lunch menus to reflect her better eating habits.

Maybe we did follow some of the advice, but it was guidelines from the federal government, and who knows if they were wrong? It was impossible.

Since those trusting days, a lot has changed. Most recently was the contagious Chinese COVID disease that required to be eradicated after an understandable lockdown of two weeks that began 19 months back. That was the emergency brake that didn’t snuff out anything except the country’s entire economy and any hope of Donald Trump’s reelection.

This guy Anthony Fauci hasn’t been seen at his desk as Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser for months because he’s appearing on every conceivable media outlet most days offering often conflicting advice on what everyone should be doing. Or, not to do.

Fauci is still undecided about what family members can do during the holiday season. I do not.

Dr. Fauci (the name means “sickle maker” back in Sicily) has also been having serial run-ins with Sen. Rand Paul, who’s also an M.D., about his connections to China and the Wuhan lab where this minute COVID critter was hatched.

I’m not the most obedient person. I am not blind, but like most Americans, neither am I a rebellious person. I have generally followed government advice for most of my life starting with “Duck and Cover.” I did register for the draft. I do pay taxes.

When I was a kid, immunizations were mandatory. To travel internationally, I got the smallpox vaccine. I got the new polio vaccine because my parents gave me no choice and I didn’t know what it was anyway.

As a foreign correspondent, I got shots for any disease within a million miles of anywhere I was likely to go — yellow fever, whooping cough, which I got anyway. The monthly gammaglobulin shots helped boost immunity. I rolled up my sleeve and the nurse said, “Take your pants down,” because they go in the ass.

From a glass of water I gulped on hot days in Spain, I learned too much about amoebic dysentery. In Vietnam, I grew so thirsty I drank a roadside vendor’s Coke from the sandwich bag he poured it in. I did become instantly vigilant about cholera and its shots after the doctor described it as “terminal diarrhea.”

All this even though I was not personally in possession of documentation proving any shot’s efficacy. I didn’t wear a bike helmet either in my childhood. I still live well beyond the lifespan of people who were born after World War II. Like Joe Biden.

I had a friend who said I shouldn’t get a flu shot because immediately after getting one, she threw up in her car. Too bad. But I get every model year’s flu shot. So, when Donald Trump’s COVID vaccine became available for my age group, I got both in the arm in my car.

It was not an easy decision. At my age, I’m no longer worried about producing mutant children. Survival is my main concern. Viral attacks on the lungs could be harmful to your health.

Masks cause my glasses to fog, which could lead me to fall on something or hit my head. But I don’t really mind if it helps keep other Walmart shoppers from breathing on me.

By the by, I am intimately familiarized with mandates. I’m married.

Rules were once called mandates. My parents were not friends in my youth. These were loving, independent adults that set clear rules and were often open to negotiations.

Fauci must be able to remove his mask from a crowd during a Nationals game so I am free to spend time with my family and friends as I wish. What number of holidays could we all have together? That was the official recommendation of an expert advisory board of one – me.

I’m not a Democrat who gets her hair done while others can’t. So, I don’t care if people do or don’t get the new vaccines or wear a mask. Just as I don’t care what they read or their cell service or if they fall for regular fundraising pleas from liberal institutions with multi-billion-dollar endowments that plan on raising tuitions next year anyway.

I am bothered, however, by nameless, faceless federal “experts” who change their powerful guidelines like celebrities change spouses. New data is the excuse, and it would work in the 1950s. And we’re supposed to obediently toodle along behind.

Many would have if, from the start, instead of acting like just-obey-us-we’re-in-charge, Fauci et al. had honestly said, “Look, this virus is so new we’re unsure of everything. Bear with us as we figure out what works best.”

However, the failures of their plans only led to distrustful and negative feelings.

According to the American Heart Association, more than 600,000.000 Americans have suffered a stroke or a heart attack in their first year.

Egyptians used willow bark more than three millennia before the invention of modern medicine. Felix Hoffman, a Bayer pharmacist, modified a portion of the willow bark in 1897 to make acetylsalicylic acids. This was what became aspirin.

It was later discovered that it has anti-inflammatory and prevents strokes and heart attacks in small doses. It was recommended that seniors aged 50-60 take at least one daily dose.

But now the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force focuses on aspirin as a blood thinner, which it’s always been. This could lead to bleeding in the intestines or brains, particularly if it is used after age 60. It also states that these dangers are now more important than any prevention benefits.

This is all hard to keep up with, isn’t it? I’m going to take two aspirins now and follow the directions to keep away from children.