A great example of white peoples greatest strength and flaw - pathological altruism. Our stories and pop culture is FULL of this messaging. It encourages a child like perspective on the world, one where everyone plays fair, learns from their mistakes and assumes the best about others, because others will also play fair, learn from their mistakes and ALSO assume the best about you. The purpose of this messaging is to lower our firewalls and allow unfiltered propaganda into our minds. The reality of this situation is that the nanites would not have spared any human on the ship because they did not need them in any respect and would have kept on growing until some natural equilibrium was reached. Also, Data was basically infected with a literal virus and his entire operating system now must be reinstalled from scratch and all the service packs re-applied sequentially. The problem here isn't that this is a ludicrous story designed for children. The problem here is that this was deliberately designed to lower the firewalls in our childrens brains and allow them to absorb propaganda unfiltered.