Not just the premium part, but also it affecting descriptions makes me think this is some kind of bug. At least partially. There's not really any point to disabling descriptions specifically, most people don't read them anyway.

"there's currently no way around it" "The issue goes away with a refresh"

The way I understand it, the issue only resolves if you refresh while on the video you want to watch. Navigating to another video would unfix it again. So it's not really a real fix the way most people expect a fix to look like. They want something they can apply and then they don't have to deal with the problem anymore. Which, based on this article, only disabling your adblocker achieves.