Is there not a field or flag like managed/unmanaged in the database associated with a node to know when it is actively under a MUTE operation?
For example you can find if a node is up/down/managed/etc but you have to pull data from multiple locations to get a glimpse of a MUTE operation that was performed. Mute would then need to go through some magic logic to make sure another mute wasn't performed also and then again that there was or was not a unmute done in there somewhere on the node (looking at audit data) so you don't mistakenly write out that two people muted it. (When in fact two people did and one person properly mute and later did unmute, where the second person came along at a later date and set it to MUTE and left it).
Simpler version would be to just grab the attribute on a node to see if muted or not (like say the boolean managed/unmanaged)
Helps with views, helps with reports, etc..
