suppress alerts when disabling alerts

It is apparently considered a feature (not a bug) that when you turn off alerting for a device group, that any previously active alert in that scope will trigger a CLEARED alert (even when the alert was not really cleared, just disabled), potentially generating a storm of false recovery alarms delivered via email, etc.  This is not well documented and  violates principal of least surprise, but I am told by support this is not considered a bug at all, just an expected platform behavior.

Please add a way to disable alerts so when you do, alerts are not generated.  It feels really silly to even have to write that last sentence, but it seems I do...

Thanks,
Mark