Does shorting this branch disable these resistors?
When you short those nodes, \$R_{15}\$ and \$R_{10}\$ are not "disabled" or ignored when performing the circuit analysis. The short creates a single larger node. In other words, \$R_6||R_3\$ is in series with \$R_{15}||R_{10}\$. Calculating the equivalent resistance: \$R_{eq}=R_2 + [(R_6||R_3)+(R_{15}||R_{10})]||R_{24}\$ Its
Its easiest to see how the short makes a single node in the following schematic of just the inner resistors:







simulate this circuit &ndash; Schematic created using CircuitLab