Is there a way to prevent merged incidents from being reopened?

We've been running into an issue where a merged incident is being reopened after a user replies to the original email notification. This causes the previously merged incident to start its SLA timer again, it doesn't show up in technician created SWSD views, and its unable to be merged into the same ticket again. When attempting to merge it for the second time, the incident you previously merged it with shows a grayed out check mark as if it is currently merged.

To be clear, we want the overall ability to reopen incidents if our users are unhappy/unresolved but merged tickets should stay closed or add the new comment to the now merged incident location. I assume we're simply missing something on our end but if not, I'll open a feature request.

Thanks!