Thank you, Simon. I really appreciate you looking into this.
I think the easiest solution for now, especially if you’ll be updating the plugin this week, is just for me to Unlink the page from Discourse. So I’ll do that. Thank you for the suggestion.
And yes, if you can look into this, that would be great. 
Obviously, how I want things to work with Disqus is my own unique deal, but I do think there’s a good argument for why it would make sense to have the Discourse Comments Template still load (without showing specific comments) for linked pages in a Private topic. That way there would be a live link at the bottom of the Wordpress page for folks who can access the Private category, which I think makes sense and would be more convenient than having to manually add that link in the content of the page every time.
Thank you for being so helpful and responsive. You rock!