I think we should focus more on educating people instead of warning them because malware programs will always be here and anti-viruses are not going to help.
It's pretty simple to avoid all these viruses, to be honest. Just watch what you're browsing, the links you're clicking and the programs you're downloading. These malware programs don't target you specifically, so... It doesn't magically come to your computer. If you are careful, you should be fine.
Well it depends on the anti-virus software also. For example, Avast is nothing when compared with Karpersky or Bitdefender. Also, the paid versions of the last two have a lot more security features than their free counterparts even when they try to have the same anti-virus engine for both versions.
What is the problem here? The problem is that the attack is coming from the web browser so in that case a free antivirus won't help you. If you truly want to be protected you need to pay.
Also certain browsers have better security than others and that security can be improved with the use of extensions like https everywhere and uBlock Origin.
An attacker needs to run a script or a macro or for you to download something to infect you most of the times since those are the easiest ways, with that and common sense you can be safer than a lot of people who don't know anything about the subject and for that reason never take any kind of measurements to protect themselves.
