I consider Merit to be for "a post worth reading", so if the post is gone, the Merit lost it's purpose.
Look only at how ridiculous this looks like:
291 merits for a blank topic.
Or this:
23 merits (10 being from theymos!) for this very interesting "34a3". The content "34a3" must be very useful.
Also, as a side note, by taking a look at the 78 topics you listed here, I noticed that within the ones not deleted his name appears now as "R20231030" and the rank is guest. So this guest got 10 merits from theymos for writing "34a3".