Agree, it does not make sense.
However, hiding count of unread replies without reading the replies makes no sense either? Actually, I’m worried about users postponing replying in topics and then forgetting about it. I can see even my mods do forget replying to questions asked in the “Staff” category - and when I phone them, they tell me “oops, I forgot”. The “unread” reminder should be visible at a glance. If that’s not what you’re going to do, may I ask you to make it configurable in Settings?