Yes, there’s no way to surface comments themselves in views, only the count.
And also yes, you’re right in that deleting the Comment Count Field/column would delete the comments from the Database. It removes it from all existing and future Entities of this Database.
There are other ways to delete it too, like opening an Entity, clicking on the ellipsis for the comment Field, then clicking Delete Field, or “Edit Fields” panel you could do the same thing.