Years ago, cards were expensive, slow, stored few photos, failed regularly. We've come a long way since then.
However, in my experience overall, I've lost few images to card failure, other than a few images due to corruption and another few images when a micro SD card got chipped since SD and micro SD cards are a little on the fragile side. CF, C-Fast and XQD cards seem to be much more robust.
I've had SD and CF cards go though the washing machine. Once dried out, seemed to work fine.
In years of travel through airport security, never an issue with the magnetic and X-ray screening devices affecting cards, cameras and file.
My card stately is to have enough cards to do a job (seldom more than a single card in the camera nowadays) or enough to last several weeks on the road without having to download and reformat. For me that's about 1 TB of cards, about 12-18, each numbered so I can at least log the date and place I started shooting the card to when I replaced it with the next card. Also, if there's an issue later with corrupt files, I can then identify which card became an issue.
My tactics is that every card is numbered and in a card wallet. I use multiple card wallets to spread them out, either in baggage and camera bag or field and studio with a few in the little plastic cases spread around in the bags, usually older, slower and smaller media so there's always something available if I forget or loose something. When I swap cards in the wallet, the used card is flipped over so I can tell that it's full.
As I travel and work, I try to back-up files either daily or every few days if travel is more than a few days. Since cards are cheap, reliable and large, it's not as much a ritual to do a nightly back-up as it once was and allows me more time to shoot and enjoy my travels and travel companions.
Once back in my studio, the card are ingested into my computer and set aside. I'll then stash the cards away until I've had a chance to add metadata to the downloaded images, do a fast screening then a back-up and out-of-studio placement of the back-up drive with all the files except butt-taken shots of the ground, back of lens caps, out of focus--the usual junk, is safely out of the studio and then I can reformat all the cards and prepare for my next project or adventure.
Media cards are not considered archival and have a limited write-rewrite cycles that most of us will never reach. One probably shouldn't fill them to the brim since that can lead to file and card glitches, also. Like a hard drive, you need to leave some headroom, maybe 10%, to avoid issues.
I reuse my cards regularly, and if there's an issue, then replace it. However, it's been several years since I've had card problems. I will usually upgrade a card to something larger or faster before a card goes bad or move on to a new card type required by a newer system as my cameras are updated.
In day-to-day shooting, I'll simply rotate my cards every month or so so that the cards will wear somewhat evenly though this practice is probably more habit than necessary today.
When I prepare for a trip, I'll also prepare each card by writing my contact info on the outside (in very tiny letters ;-) and then write a jpeg file onto each that has my name and contact info (email, phone, website) as part of the file that says "Read Me" so that if I do loose a card along the way and it is found, there's still away to find me if the card isn't crushed or reformatted in the interim.
I think Thom Hogan has good info on cards as do several other sites to get you the nitty-gritty on each. My system works for me but as always YRMV...