Ah, I see (and thanks for answering!). I don't use an LJ import right now but I do use custom s2 (the CSS goes in the custom CSS box on the wizard page, though, not with the s2 the way I have it set up - not that it would make a difference to how anything displays or to this discussion - oh, OK, I forgot LJ s2 gets set up differently, and under the old core, so I guess my layout is at least theoretically going to work with this).

And that makes sense (and in some sort of fuzzy and undefined way is sort of what I had expected); if there is no comment link printed to start the refresh count, then there's nothing to count up from 0 (but I can see why you'd file a bug on it, as there ought to be something to start the refresh from 0, even without the link)...