Just to autistically focus on the topic instead of veering off into troll-land:

A large percentage of people are iodine deficient, so giving people potassium iodate or iodine, is simply good health practice. For some reason people are afraid of halogens, and will make up 'drink bleach' slogans as part of their silly campaigns against any form of halogen intake. Yes, fluorine chlorine and bromine are in the same group, but as the atoms get bigger, they are less reactive. So Iodine is not only fine to get on your skin, or to swallow, but it is actually vital.

Re: the "Romania is handing out"...As a comparison, in the Central Americas the governments listened to Dr Zelenko and now hand out packs with ivermectin, hydroxychlolorquine, aspirin, zinc, vitamin C and vitamin D. To a poor nation, who do not want to lose their population, it is not scary for governments to hand out what are essentially supplements and over-the-counter remedies.

However, potassium iodide tablets are a very handy scare-de-cat tool for making people afeared-of-nookoolear-fall-out, as becomes apparent when you visit the CDC. A threat prolly does not exist, but you can never be sure. However, what this casual reference to radiation does, is turn people off from investing in iodine, because, well, we aren't gonna get that problem here....one only needs to buy it when there is an emergency or something.

In any case, iodine rinses clear out the viral loads carried in throats, so the ingestible versions can be useful in the war against flu-like illness. What a bonus.