Something to consider is that they did say “Your life is your own” and Pirate Lady refused to choose between Carol and Air Force One man. Hurting someone emotionally isn’t something they want to do willingly. So unless they’re lying I don’t think they’ll force joining the hive mind on anyone.

Similarly when they saw they were causing Carol distress they acknowledged it backed away from the interaction.

Forcing Carol to drink water would have been distressing for Carol, so they could also be why they didn’t force her to drink.

HOWEVER we saw during the initial infection that people were activated and joined more or less one by one. But as we saw when the countdown reached zero, the majority of the world was held back from activation and instead activated all at once. We also know the global activation was rushed as the military was catching on.

Now they may not have known the activation process would kill some people, but they must have known a global seizure would cause some number of deaths and harm.

So they have a sense of self preservation and that sense does allow them to cause harm.