Except they haven’t, either, now have they? I mean, being forced to undergo mutation through ‘bioadaptation’ to make them something other than human… that’s really not ‘come out of the ordeal just fine’. That’s ‘come out of the ordeal permanently twisted into something else’.
citation needed, please. We have exactly no information as to the Collective’s actual state with regard to survival, economics, industry, etc. We don’t even really have anything from them we could base such statements on, and we certainly don’t have any way to independently corroborate the words of an invading force that shows no sign of having resources more functionally limited than all of New Eden combined.
Neither do you. Because there’s no way to reliably ascertain them.