I wonder if this is fixed in 8 or 9?
To get the number of comments rendered on your node, you can add this to the template (e.g., node.tpl.php) for your theme.
<?php
echo "<a href='".$node_url."#comments'>";
print $node->comment_count;
if($node->comment_count==1) {
echo " comment ";}
else echo " comments ";
echo "</a>";
?>