EDIT: Updated comment above.

This even seems to be an unpredictable issue using PDO and different drivers when connections time out.

I'm on mobile now, I can link references in about 30minutes if that's fine? Otherwise, search up the MySQL has gone away error not throwing PDO exception.

Yea, do share, I'm not in an immediate hurry. I found some links but they do not describe it as you did, I prefer authoritative links on this matter, i.e. bug reference etc. Thank you.