To me, it sounds like poor, little, old, suffering 'Time' magazine is trying to get eyeballs.
The article sounds like a total yawn to me, that is, just old and obvious. So, I long understood: If eat some food with some table salt, that is, NaCl, then within an hour or so likely the salt concentration in blood will increase and then blood pressure will increase. But, the body has a system that regulates salt concentration; so, if the salt concentration is too high, then the body will lower the salt concentration, and the usual way is to flush out the extra salt in urine. So, net, likely within a few hours, the salt concentration will be back to where the body wants it. Typically, for reasonably healthy people, no biggie.
Somewhat separately there is a disease called hypertension which means high blood pressure, and such blood pressure can be dangerous, e.g., cause blood vessels to break and leak, say, in the brain -- not good. If a person has this disease, then extra salt that further increases blood pressure, even just for a few hours, can be not good. So, for such a person, a standard recommendation is to reduce input of salt: So, e.g., don't sit around eating salted peanuts, potato chips, etc.
But does eating salt cause the disease hypertension? Nope.
Then, bingo, presto, wonder of wonders, the mass media, always eager for getting eyeballs, often by grabbing people, by the heart, the gut, below the belt, always below the shoulders, never between the ears, comes out screaming about salt suggesting that salt, exploiting really simplistic thinking, is somehow bad. Or, since people are sensitive to suggestions or symptoms of danger, suggesting that salt is bad can get eyeballs.
Then companies that manufacture and want to sell food products, say, bread, may see a selling opportunity, lower the amount of salt in their products, and then scream on their product labels that their products are healthy because they are low salt.
We can see how the mass media and their food product advertising customers have a common interest: The media raises fears about salt, and the food companies scream that their products are healthy because they are low in salt. It's deliberate confusion and deception, that is, in a word, a scam, all in an attempt to get money from ordinary people.
This scam has been going on for decades. E.g., back in the 1980s I was in the house of some friends; they were in their 20s and in perfect health, with perfect weight, etc. The husband was a good athlete, and his wife was drop dead gorgeous. But the wife was cooking with low salt based on the scam, i.e., that salt would cause hypertension, which of course it would not.
Or, as in the title here, "No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure", of course not. There never was any such association. Salt does not cause hypertension; there's never been any competent claim that salt did cause hypertension.
So, now Time gets another way to grab eyeballs -- debunk the scam that for at least three decades has had way too many people thinking the total nonsense that salt causes hypertension.
For the media, there's a pattern here: To get eyeballs, create a scam. Then, later, maybe decades later, to get more eyeballs, debunk the scam. Then continue with more scams -- there are many possible scams.
So, net, salt does not cause the disease hypertension, and the media likes to use scams to get eyeballs. Virginia, if you didn't already know this, then listen up and learn. I mean, by now, we expected something else?