Bags are lost often enough there’s a charity selling the bags that never get claimed.

https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/pages/how-it-works

They say a 3 month search, but if you read around you’ll see 5+ days and your bag is basically gone. They say .03% of all checked bags end up lost and then unclaimed. How many must get lost to reach that unclaimed number?

It could be as high as 10% if you have a connecting flight, maybe? I’ve been fortunate enough to always fly direct and never had any lost baggage. I’ve always assumed direct is fine, it’s once you start transferring loads across different flights and codeshare carriers it starts to do awry.

Of course - but it's an indication of the ludicrous scale.