How to keep folders organized when creating virtual copies in collections?

Hi,

What I want to do:

Make a collection of whatever (best of 2020, people, trees), edit the images (e.g. crop to a defined format), print, delete the collection or keep it for later use (depends).

How I would like to do it:

In order to not change my original edits in my folders (one folder per shooting/holiday/event), I create virtual copies.

The problem:

It creates a virtual copy in the original folder and a link to it in the collection. So, after making a best of 2020 with 100 photos, I have 100 virtual copies all over my folders. I make another collection and again 100 virtual copies all over the place. This is already a big mess only after 2 collections. How am I supposed to keep my pictures organizes over the years when I have hundreds of collections? A folder with 5 photos would maybe have 100 virtual copies in it when I use them a lot in my collections.

My questions:

Isn't that something that photographers do regularly, make a collection from different shoots? Don't they edit the photos after they make a collection?

I have seen many posts that explain how collections and virtual copies work and I fully understand that, but no one explains how to solve that problem and I just do not see how this cannot be a problem for almost every photographer. What did I miss?