My "other app" has the comment section. Can't say about the official one. Haven't touched it in years.

I just noticed this an hour ago also. I can still access it via the landscape mode button but not normally. I thought it was maybe a bug I had to restart YT to fix but perhaps not since you have it too.

yt android has been buggy as fuck for me. randomly disconnecting while casting, captions stopping halfway thru a video and the button for them greyed out until i disconnect and restart the app, no tab buttons at the bottom when i first open and it goes straight into shorts instead of homepage until i back out then restart the app, sometimes when trying to watch a video on the app and not casting it just straight up refuses to play not even showing a buffering symbol just the play button like a static image. it's gotten ridiculously bad.