But 1 and 2 are 'yes, I do want to keep things'. All I'm saying is WhatsApp (and similar) make that a pain, deliberately to try to lock you in, and it's annoying.
With regards to 1) they are simply saved elsewhere, in your Contacts. You can import/export that.
It is a sacrifice of user-unfriendly security. They could've easily made a backup function which does not (solely) involve Google Drive. They opted not to.
However there's an upside to this as well: if you delete that key, you're done for. If your discussion partner(s) do the same, the data between you and your discussion partners is also done for.
I agree with you, but I don't find it difficult to work around it, and the previous solutions (plaintext, unencrypted logs) were terrible.
