I used to pay for McAffee for several years and only got about 1 virus a year. I traded it for the free Malwarbytes and have had no virus in 11 years. I received an offer of lifetime Malwarebytes premium on a Nothing-But-Software email for 12.95 and said what the hell and bought it. I still haven’t had any virus and it now updates itself.
I use no virus protection and have had only one problem in 10 or so years. I use Acronis backup. Images infrequently, file backups frequently. With the problem I mentioned I restored from an image backup and then restored from the most recent file backup.
I back up on a USB-connected drive that I only connect when doing a backup (or restore).