Inbox emails for Gmail account keep being deleted from Apple Mail

For at least a few months now, all emails in the Inbox for a particular Gmail account of mine periodically get wiped out. I can usually log in to the Gmail site and find the emails are still there, but there was one time recently that the Gmail Inbox was totally deleted as well. Those emails can't be found in any other folders, not even in Trash. Changing my password to the account hasn't helped, so it doesn't appear to be a security issue.

This seems like there's some sort of bug between Gmail and Apple Mail, and it appears to be one that has affected various users over at least the past several years. I've started backing up important emails to a separate folder. I can't upgrade my OS beyond Catalina, but I regularly install all other updates. I don't know that there's a solution other than hoping this issue is eventually debugged somehow.