Brian,
I have been involved in computer security and malware removal for many years. I have access to a number of discussion topics in private forums and faithfully track some particularly (for back of a better description) involved discussion topics. Let's just say you are absolutely correct -- it is indeed enough to make your head spin keeping up with the current malware and proper tools.
Some people are of the incorrect opinion that throwing every available scanner at the machine will solve the problem. Just think about the person with a heavily infected computer, getting pop-ups and redirects, their A/V and firewall not working, Windows Update disabled and they're told to download and scan with five different software programs. I've also seen where some idiot cleared system restore and then started registry edits. It made for a useless doorstop.
