I wonder if this is why I’ll see a post has a larger comment count than the comments I can read, too.

If you’ve blocked someone, that person’s comments and all comments replying to theirs are hidden from your view. This is my only guess why you might be seeing this. The comment count you see on your instance should be accurate, since it only counts comments it knows about and it doesn’t know about defederated ones.

Removed by mod

No it’s mostly people going nuts over little to nothing.