Once you start counting something, the reporting of that count becomes a self-licking ice cream cone, and without a clear understanding of why you counted it in the first place (throughout the command) you're counting just because you always counted, and then it becomes some form or mis-construed performance metric or a continual quest to outdo the old record, or some other useless mutated bit of BS.

Counting something in and of itself is not the problem. Misapplication of the count is the problem.