Dave was to precious to get shot by police, as you dug into his memories as understood the modern world. Atomic bombs. Machine guns. Surface to air missiles. Weapons that could kill on their own. Humans had invented a lot of beautifully deadly toys. You were sincerely impressed, this was going to have to stay once they were all dragons. But right now, you had to make sure that actually happened! If Dave was killed, that would be the end of you. For now, you need to spread yourself to as many humans as possible! And to as many viable carries as possible!
Turning Dave into a dragon right now would be a disaster. While you couldn't compel Dave to jump off a cliff or run over someone with his car (nor would you need to), you could compel him to do something he had (for now) no real objection to.
On the list was:
1) Infect Dave's pets.
2) Donate blood (you were technically a virus, you now existed in every one of Dave's living cells).
3) Infect Dave's coworkers.
4) And finally, get Dave to quit his job because he wants to be adventurous and see the world!
First, there was Zorro, Dave had wanted a pet Raccoon since he was a boy, but everyone told him it was a BAD idea, so he got a Dalmatian instead. A big hug from Dave, some licking from Zorro, and the dumb animal was a carrier. There was no way whatever in HELL that you can make the animal intellect, and that it ran on instinct meant you couldn't really control it, but now the dog could carry the virus to other animals and to other humans. Next was Celo, Dave's pet tan and dark brown spotted 'Egyptian' kitty. The two animals were let out, and following the basic instinct to seek more of their own kind to subtly infect.
Then Dave visited the local Red Cross... and Dave passed all the screenings, all the paper work, and boom, his blood was now in the system. Also you infected the white cross workers while you were at it, all in the incubation period.
You let Dave go about the rest of his vacation day as he would, but then compelled him to go back to work early...to quit... Dave sure did sneeze a lot that day. Heh. Dave admitted there was nothing wrong with his job, he just wanted to travel the world. His bosses were NOT happy about him dropping this on them out of nowhere, but they couldn't exactly stop him.
While triggering yourself in the humans you'd infected so far might be worthwhile, for now, you needed to do some traveling, and visit major cities around the world, so human couldn't just drop a nuke on some no name city and call it a day. Maybe visit the capital, take a tour of some government buildings... then visit London, Tokyo, Paris, Rome, Australia, good old New Work, San Franciso, and Mexico City... sure this would drain Dave's funds to practically nothing...but by then, he wouldn't matter...
Then you'd have dragons again, intelligent, rational, able to work together, and with thumbs and walking upright like humans and able to use tools... but savage, greedy, violence, ruthless, and proud of their perfect bodies, dragons mentally and physically.