People should lose the merit if the post is deleted for whatever reason. Allowing it is just ripe for abuse as people can just merit shitposts or posts that are in fact copy and pasted then delete to hide the evidence.
Also, as members are raising voice against this problem, more abusers will get to know about this. They will also try to get away with their merit abuses by doing the same thing till a fix is implemented. Is there any page to see recently deleted posts here ?