Treatment of W97M.Downloader

I have Norton Internet Security on a Lenovo desktop with Windows 7. Lately, sometimes when I perform a full system scan, NIS finds W97M.Downloader, sometimes more than one instance of it, which NIS labels as "quarantined". My question: Why doesn't NIS intercept and delete W97M.Downloader when it first arrives on my desktop (with email I presume)? What would happen if I were not to run a full system scan regularly? Once, after a full system scan, NIS seemed to have found W97M.Downloader, but not quarantined it. I went to Norton's website, and there learned that I should go into Safe Mode, run a full scan, and then delete W97M.Downloader, which I did. I have been using Norton utilities since the days of Peter Norton and DOS. This is the first time that Norton does not seem to me to be functioning sensibly (reassuringly). Am I missing something? Thank you.