FYI, that feature makes the comment completely invisible on pages where it would otherwise show up in the basic HN web interface (no asterisks or anything). But it appears that if I go to the URL comment directly from a non-logged-in browser, it does show the three asterisks. So it looks like hnstatus becomes aware of the new comment (probably just enumerating IDs?), and can see its parent but but can't read the content.

(I edited this comment based on investigation I did while this comment was in its delay period)