An article in The Wall Street Journal this week quoted executives from antivirus pioneerSymantec uttering words that would have been industry heresy a few years ago, declaring antivirus software “dead” and stating that the company is focusing on developing technologies that attack online threats from a different angle.

If it's dead then why are there so many viruses?

They mean revenues from selling anti-virus as their definition of dead.   You still need someone dissecting malware effects even with a perfect behavioral analytic system.  

But more generally, it always was shocking to hear "Mac" people say they were completely secure and didn't need any type of security software on their laptops.  After sending them lists of all sorts of exploits and OSX security patch notifications, their response?  "Oh, those aren't viruses."  The stupidity is infinite compounded by stupid Apple's marketing which left two or three generations with a false security blanket.  

In today's multi-faceted security world, you need security in depth, both vertically--everything from incoming and outgoing LAN points to intra-node communication--and horizontally, everything from identity protection to security patches, to malware protection, to even protecting stupid users from themselves.