Well my understanding is they want to advance technologies and are pushing a massive human experiment to get just that. Other than that no, I'm not a mind reader, their points make zero sense with their own data or reasons given.
The other reason that I can think of is everyone wants to be like China with it's social credit, or the Soviet Union with it's internal passports given that in the UK the ones who advise the government when it comes to covid are members of the communist party, it makes me go hmm.
Sorry about that, that was my fault for not being specific, tulskij_tochnyj response (added it below) is what I was getting at.
I'm glad you answered the way you did though as it produced more conversation. I hate to agree with a communist in any way, there are parts to the social distancing news article that I completely support, the whole '...good ventilation and hand and surface hygiene.', the masking and distance stuff is just insane though, as much as I'd love, to not have someone breathing down my neck while waiting in line. This chick sounds like she's a germophobe, the whole article makes sense when considering it from that and the communist perspective.
Overall I think people have started realising how easy it is, to spread germs from one person to another, which hopefully might contribute to at least a larger percentage of society being a little more 'clean' so to speak. <insert huge

sticker here>
Restrictions imposed on placebo group could lead to lower chances of infection and thus skew the data. Also, it can lead to the unblinding of subjects (if they were not unblinded already, I don't know the design of this study). They will change their behavior and it will skew the data further,
Unblinding was the thing that killed Sputnik V phase 3 trial in Russia. People got their antibodies tested (quantitative IgE test costs $15 here), and part of placebo group was able to get the vaccine in a regular way, because the vaccine had been authorized for emergency use BEFORE the beginning of Phase 3 trial.
And given how "safe and effective" vaccines are, keeping untouched placebo groups is important for future retrospective studies (and, hopefully, lawsuits).
Even C students get degrees and all that. I've long suspected that most GPs just leave the room to consult some WebMD for their diagnoses. It's not like med school teaches critical thinking any more than other STEM field. All you need to pass is memorization and a touch of pattern recognition.
People with the chops to follow the scientific method and correlate research exist, but they're few in number. Almost every doctor visit in my adult life, I've already figured out what was wrong and told the doc on my intake form. These Believe Muh Science tards think medicine is magic. Truth is, you can figure out at least half of it as a layperson with the ability to categorize symptoms and figure out what stats mean.
Trying to get people to realise this is one of the hardest things I've come across. A GP sees how many people a day, having only 15 minutes for majority of them (in Australian practices), there is no way in hell they can be up to date with every single condition.
It is the single biggest reason for a person to learn to research correctly (most libraries have online assess to journal databases these days), critically assess the information you find, and then take it to your doctor to discuss it.
Also allows you to judge if your doctor is actually interested in human welfare, or just a quack. A human welfare doctor will be able to quickly look through the new information and adjust their existing knowledge, to at least come up with a starting point and know if they need to look into it further and tell you that.
Of course as the world is finding out, pride and ego is all important, amongst the ones who see themselves as indispensable (as GPs often see themselves), the smug look on Fauci's face after his 'outburst' in the senate, knowing exactly what he was doing, says it all.