What you were hoping for was no change in your life. You gave a scenario and a solution was provided to you. You're taking no responsibility, and want no change in convenience. How can you expect the ignorant to move off of WhatsApp if even the informed won't do it?

I did the method suggested above and the vast majority of my contacts eventually moved to Signal, those that didn't switched to old fashioned SMS to contact me. You are not missing out by not being a part of one specific messaging app, there are many out there.

If you live in the EU, you will soon be able to message via a third party app to Whatsapp users thanks to the Digital Markets Act from last year. Meta said they're planning to release this feature this year. However through this feature Meta will still be able to retain data about your messaging. And since Zuckerberg has now openly aligned himself with Trump, there's a fair chance that data will be used against you at some point in the future.

I recommend you sever any ties to Meta and switch to a privacy focused messenger app like Signal. It has the same interface, but far stronger encryption and it's open source.

That would be Beeper but you have to be aware that you’re still using WhatsApp with all metadata collection involved

It's not about them moving. They don't need to stop using Whatsapp. They can just add one more app. I communicate with different people on different platforms. It's quite usual nowadays.