I think things could be boiled down to this one big question.
Do we want to learn Linux or do we just want to use it as a tool?
I myself would take the previous stance (to prevent me to go senile 
), but everyone has their own priority.
If Linux ever wanted to break that 2% adoption rate, things like an integrated anti-virus is a good starting point, I think.
Solution need go to up to hearing a voice a people who are using Linux.
I know people don't like difficult operating systems.
That why in Norway many popular is apple.
Norway little go to America side.
It also depends on the industry.
For example, all the colleagues of my musician husband are using Mac. he only knows one Windows user and no Linux user other than himself. I think I am a very influential figure to him at least for the OS choice
All you need is to provide a man food for his stomach, and some coffee, and you can convert him to do anything. Its a well known fact, behind every great man, is a great woman.
Then I know who I can asked next distribution linux after Zorin if Iwant a some comparison testing. Sadly 99% are black screen.
There is this old German saying that "the quickest way to get to man's brain is through his stomach".
You could be right.
My nickname among his family is "Cordon Bleu chef".
I know how to integrate the Asian culinary techniques with the European cooking.
Where is the exorcist? 
I notice you have increased your font size to really emphasize the demon within. Well, if you want to talk about demons, lets talk about Cononical and Gnome 41. Which oddly makes me start thinking about Section 31. Remember this creep?
Not all as it seems, look under the covers, and what you find, are monsters that lurk.
I just copied this from a side a word and it gived big size words.
You scared me to death 
When the truce is revealed - it is often not that too frightening
ha ha- I would probably pay money to know what that entails ! 
I do home based tech support for a living and out of the thousands of Windows users I support and can tell you categorically that is most definitely not the case.
So what I am talking about here is not just a one off anecdote, but based on over 10 years experience of one on one face to face tech support.
Even if you do everything right yourself, there is a strong chance other windows users you interact with are not, and they are giving you infected usb sticks, sending you infected emails etc.
And then there is the most common attack vector on Windows (and Mac), website ads. A good adblocker will help with this but it is not a silver bullet.
And one other thing that is very important to remember about viruses, if they are well written they will not slow down your computer and you wont even know they are there.
My customers that have the most badly infected computers all have one thing in common.
They are either using Windows Defender, Norton, or McAfee antivirus on their computers and it is literally letting almost anything infect their computers.
It is important to understand that Windows Defender is supplied by Microsoft as a courtesy to tide you over until you install something decent, it is not meant to be a permanent AV solution.
The last thing Microsoft want to do is cut their AV Developers lunch, this means less work they have to do on that part of their operating system, and it also attracts more windows users because of a wider choice of software on that platform.
As Ballmer would put it Developers, Developers, Developers
Totally agree with this, I would really like to bring my customers over to Linux, this is one of the reasons why I am testing Zorin OS.
But that being said I can understand the other side of the argument, with a GUI you have no idea what is going on under the hood when you click a button, with CLI you do.
It is now becoming more obvious to the average user, especially average mac user, that tech users can no longer afford to be babies and give up control of their tech to Big Daddy (or should I say brother) software and OS developers.
People really need to learn to be more aware of what is going on with their computers and other devices.
But once again coming back to tomscharbach's original point.
The lack of well made GUI software on Linux is a huge barrier to entry for new and novice computer users.
Knowing his occupation, I suspect they would include a welding torch and a sledge hammer 
Interesting to see that you also came to the same conclusion as mine.
When I was on Windows, I loved Malwarebytes. Thats one of those APPS that I felt really bad about, that I couldn't migrate over to Linux. And since Malwarebytes was always free for me, I couldn't and still don't understand, why they won't put out a version for Linux.