My wp_comments database is gone

My webhost recently had some trouble with No space left on device”–you know how it goes. Figuring that it might be an issue with an unoptimized comments table, I attempted to optimize the comments, but it appears to have deleted the entire table. Here’s the error:

WordPress database error: [Can’t open file: ‘wp_comments.MYD’. (errno: 144)]

I don’t need the comments back, and I do have a very stale backup, but I would like to be able to have a comments database.