In this example the comments count of the post says 5, yet I can't see any comments. Are the comments hidden from me or is it a bug?

Those 5 comments are on the version of that post in the fuck_cars community.

This is how it looks to me:

You have probably blocked that community, the author of the post in fuck_cars, or the instance the author / community are on.

Thanks, that cleared it! Would be a cool feature to be able to unhide blocked comments when curiosity gets the better of me. But I can also live without it now that I know ;)

Yes I've often thought the same thing! Or at least a message saying how many comments were blocked and which filter it was.

What was the answer? I have seen this but have not looked in to it.

Related topic, though not the same :

Voyager app has a big blue button on the posts page, that leads to the temporary display of hidden posts (not comments).

This is really useful for many purposes, I guess. for me it is useful, because I have some kind of inbox zero approach. I swipe away (hide) post that I have seen and do not want to see anymore . But sometimes I still want to see them again. Then I just press this button.

Would be cool for PieFed, too!
This approach could be applied to posts, as on voyager, as well as on comments, as discussed in OP.

I had blocked the community fuck_cars