Spoilers Pluribus

[Stalker0]

The conversation about seeing someone drowning in a lake makes me wonder if the infected see themselves as one single individual, and Carol as another individual of equal value? So if she kills a bunch of their bodies it doesn't actually harm them as an individual. But if she is hurt it's the equal of all 8 billion of the infected being hurt.

I think the Helen aspect somewhat answers this. Helen is "dead", but to the hive mind all of her thoughts and memories are still with them. So they lost a small amount of useful productivity in the form of one less worker....but nothing "important" has been lost (we dust off thousands of cells every day, but our body thinks nothing of it, as nothing "important" is lost). If Carol is hurt or killed....that is the lost of unique thoughts, memories and perspectives at the hive mind would NEVER get to have....in comparison you could see why they would value her so much.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That was my first thought, as well.

The virus turns the dominant species on a planet into a bunch of selfless people-pleasers. Also, the infected become pacifists who can't willingly take a life, even to save themselves. Also, they might literally die if someone giving them orders is displeased with them. Each of those features by itself sounds like a control mechanism designed to take over a planet. And the virus is engineered to have all three.

I'm half expecting a second countdown clock to pop up after Carol and the guy from Paraguay look back at the source of the signal and discover an incoming alien ship.

Alien invasion or not, I'm also wondering how long it will be before the hive mind decides it's time to propagate further by turning the entire Earth into a giant transmitter. Presumably, that's the hive mind's biological imperative, even if it means retiring the human species in oder to carry it out.

Personally, I think prelude to Alien invasion would be a boringly conventional way to go.

A virus with no inherent sentience, but that has evolved naturally to propagate itself around the galaxy using intelligent species as a host body, depending on their inherent curiosity to download itself from radio signals, is rather more interesting.

 

[Retros_x]

and some cultures value the group over the individual much higher than western culture so there is that element

I interpreted it that this was the main reason they did react so differently or even wanted to be part of it like the young woman. I think Americans and Europeans tend to overestimate how much their western culture dominates other cultures.

On another note, me and my GF found after episode 3 the entity/virus likable and also did wonder if its all a trap or if they actually are a tool for some other aliens. Really intriguing show, we still can't grasp how they want to do a multiple season show out of it. We were also pleasently surprised that Carol meets the other survivors so fast (the english speaking ones at least).

Carol is a very interesting main character, I've read somewhere the tagline of some video analysis of the show along the lines of "One Karen against a woke hivemind" and I can't stop thinking about that. Even the name Carol/Karen have some phonetic semblance.

 

[Aeson]

I think some people are willing to live in a state of denial about their loved ones than live with the truth. The infected are willing to go along with it because it's their nature.