Catalogs in LR are data bases, and yes they do get corrupted but infrequently. Before you toss that catalog, try copying over one from your back up catalogs. THen relaunch LR Classic and try opening the backup catalog. Hopefully your backup catalog is not so old that it is missing a ton of recent work.
In general it is recommended to have at least 3 copies of your catalog. One on the working computer, one on an external drive, and another one, either on another external or in the cloud.
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