views_handler_field_numeric.render sanitizes value, but is that really necessary?

I would like the ability to make these kinds of plural formatting:

@count<br/>comments

However, that doesn't work, and in my opinion the <br> is incorrectly stripped.

In views_handler_field_numeric.render() we have this code:

return $this->sanitize_value($this->options['prefix'] . $value . $this->options['suffix']);

Why is this value sanitized? We know the value is a numeric, the prefix/suffix etc are all provided by the site developer. So no injection attacks are possible in this code path. So why sanitize and preclude perfectly acceptable html tags?

So I propose we have this:

return $this->options['prefix'] . $value . $this->options['suffix'];

Patch attached.