I personally don’t use antivirus protection. I feel being careful and doing manual scans are plenty. The internet is very secure these days, they even cracked down on Flash, so If you don’t open anything weird/ click any ads/ stay in safe websites, you should be fine. However, virus protections have become kind of a stigma these days, in that everyone feels they need one, so I don’t think they will be going away for a while. What franktech says is true, about virus protection degrading.
Hope this helps.