I always thought it was done for the same reason as vaccination. Prevent illness in the healthy, protect the immune-deficient.
Then again, this only really started after H1N1. It probably just hasn’t died down because marketers realized that if we still act like there’s an epidemic, they can still sell us hygiene products like there’s an epidemic. Who needs Atwood’s real genetically engineered diseases when you can do just as well with imaginary ones amirite?
