Sublime Text 4: show word count for selected text

I recall that when selecting a block of text in Sublime Text the status bar used to display the word count. This answer confirms that I recall correctly, Sublime Text 3 used to show that information:

I'm running Sublime Text 4 (Build 4143) and this information is no longer displayed. Only lines and character counts are shown:

Is this feature hidden in the settings somewhere or did ST remove it entirely? If so, why??

Sublime does not and has never had this power without a plugin. Seen below is a screen shot of the last version of Sublime Text 3 with no settings or packages and some text selected.

The counts displayed are for the selected lines and characters, but not words; there is also no setting in the core that enables this.

The answer you linked is to a question where someone is asking about the WordCount package itself, and in particular asking about how to apply a setting. The answer states that you just need to select text to see counts in the status bar without having to set any setting, which is true: