While testing NUT for Windows builds (so might be a platform issue as well), I pulled the USB cable to disconnect the UPS completely while the driver was running (with libusb-1, in pollonly mode, since interrupt mode failed with I/O errors early after stratup for this device/system combo).
It still reports regular "Quick updates" and less frequent "Full updates" even an hour since the cable yank, never noticing that the device is physically not there anymore.