Not really. You can't post a reply to Post 1, but that's no different than any other comment we need to pull.
True, it makes it more difficult to reply to the person who posted the thread unless they participate later in the discussion, but you could always type in their screenname manually.
It's a convention that comments on the main article go to post 1, and "view replies" will show them all. I wish there was a way to still do this, as well as (while I'm speaking of it) a way to find out where a banned ID has made comments in the past.