iOS 15.2 update– photos in Messages and Photos disappeared

I’ve just read a bit about this regarding the iOS 15 update, but I just updated my phone to 15.2 and something both similar and worse happened to me.

I think it’s because Apple tried (and failed) to do something with the “saved from” and “shared with” features. But I just begrudgingly updated to 15.2 because I got new AirPods (and I hadn't updated to iOS 15 yet because I'd heard terrible things), and I noticed that hundreds of photos have disappeared from my messages. If I hit person's name > photos > see all, there are countless images missing. There’s no “download” option anymore, and if I look for one of the missing photos in the message chain, it shows the “tap to download” but won’t load anything when I tap. I've also noticed that the photos missing from my messages are also missing from my photo album, for the ones that I saved there. 

Just beyond frustrating, not something you think you have to worry about. So many valuable pictures gone– they were literally stolen by Apple. Is there a fix for this? Is Apple working to fix this? They need to restore the photos, this is ridiculous.