I sort of hate to say this, but... is this really worth complaining about? I'm specifically addressing this to those of us that posted angry, frustrated comments after the bug was fixed.
The database screwed up for between 24 and 48 hours. It got fixed (and, yes, my missing 160K are back too). It had no consequences for anybody's status or upgrades.
So something went wonky and it got fixed pretty quickly. This happens pretty often in the IT world -- heck, Hilton's entire reservations engine goes down about once a month. Honestly, much as I'd love to complain about this, I don't think it's worth it. There was never any concrete reason to believe that the screwup was either (1) permanent, or (2) malicious -- and no cause to believe that United was out to get us or significantly incompetent... unless you were already convinced of that.
Definitely not trying to start a flame discussion here. I just believe it's not a very big deal. (Obviously, had it not been fixed, it would have been a big deal... and from now on I'm keeping track of my lifetime miles just to be careful.)