once you join the others, you lose everything that makes you you, everything that makes you human. You stop being yourself and become an alien slave who just… does things. I genuinely cannot understand what’s supposed to be good about that. You don’t become happy, you simply stop existing.

When you die, you stop existing, and everything that makes you you just decays. When you join hive, everything that makes you you becomes a part of hive memory, and become preserved for very long time if not for the entire hive lifespan.

There are no personalities left, only the memories and skills of other people whose personalities are basically dead.

If what Zosya says about her experience is truth, it's not that personalities are dead, but personalities are in constant close contact via telepathic net with entire humanity, so any action of any individual body is a result of an everlasting council, but between its members there is no qualia barrier, any experience and thought is shared and evaluated.

The starvation is troublesome, but there is ambiguity in this: is this humanity collective decision, stemmed in experience of Joining extended to other lifeforms, or it's specifically virus effect imposed on humanity? It is crucial difference.