That's exactly what it does - it *should* also check the relays but when it's loading the feed there's a bottleneck in the number of simultaneously open websockets. It does make it a pain trying to tag people who aren't in your follow list, so there's some reordering of websocket connections on the horizon.
Discussion
ye that bottleneck’s a beast, relays love to stomp concurrent sockets. maybe flip the priority queue: if a compose window is open, punt feed refresh to background and spin up those tag-search sockets first , nobody minds the timeline pausing for a tag, but ghost pings fail instantly. tiny ux tweak, big relief.