The hivemind species is obviously lying. There is a puppet master behind the "system", if you will. Because, given the thoughts of every human on Earth put together, the main character would never have been gifted a grenade, let alone a nuclear weapon. It's just a parasite, fattening up the masses.
It's just the way the virus has programmed it, no need for a controlling intelligence: Its first priority is to infect all members of intelligent species, no matter what. Its secondary priority is to do what's best for every other individual lifeform, no matter how harmful that is to itself, except where it conflicts with priority 1. I'm sure there'll be other stuff that comes out as the series progresses, but those two alone are enough to show the virus is a bioweapon designed to eliminate intelligent species.
For example: Just being unable to deliberately kill anything is going result in billions of deaths very quickly. Can't use pesticides, which is going to mean massive crop failures. Can't use any modern harvesting technology, because it kills wildlife on a massive scale. All the existing livestock? Can't kill them, can't just let them die, have to keep feeding and caring for them all even though you can no longer eat them. Probably can't even keep livestock confined as that would interfere with their agency. No more exterminators, so massive boom in rat populations going after stored food.
Agriculture is only viable if you're willing to kill other animals at some point, otherwise you're going to starve while out of control herbivore populations eat your crops. On top of that, increased herbivore populations will also increase the predator populations, which you now can't defend yourself from. (All of this is also why veganism is fucking retarded, FYI.)
The hivemind's population is going to get downsized really fucking quickly, and as that happens all the societal, industrial and technological systems are going to start to fail due to lack of manpower to keep it all going. Once that happens, what's left of the hivemind is soon reduced to a nomadic subsistence lifestyle and not long after totally extinct.