Is anyone assuming they’re sterile (aseptic) tho? I would hope nobody is using paper towels for anything important in a medical context. In other cases their sterility is not important at all, interacting with microbes (includiing pathogenic ones) is a normal part of everyday life and our immune systems are pretty good at dealing with them (unless you are exposed to a lot of something particularly nasty, like during a pandemic or by being sneezed at or smth). Unless you go full-on germaphobe, the microbial contamination that exists on new paper towels is nothing compared to other stuff you interact with (smartphone, door handles, kitchen sponge, fresh produce, etc).

Otherwise, they’re self-evidently cleaner than whatever I’m trying to clean with them, that’s why they work for cleaning in the first place. If I swipe a kitchen counter with them after cooking, it will very obviously have less gunk and shmutz now, which means it will be cleaner.