The only reason why so many Merit have happened is that the post is just at the beginning. Am I right there?
The number of Merit earned by a post depends on the number of people that read it. Being at the beginning of this thread means many people have seen it, which increases the chance of getting merited.And the comment is on point and represents many of members opinion, so i guess it is a well deserved merit for the post. You can be on the first page but people still can find your post is not meritorious enough.
I doubt that some random people will get that much amount of merits for a short comment even it is worth to read in that thread.