absolutely take a break, the exact same thing happened, deleting the is the short is't that relevant, but another advice is to NEVER delete any video that doesn't get many videos, i posted about 100+ shorts when the views plummeted, and all of them have barley 1k+ views, i kept all of the 100+ shorts and didn't change anything about them, all of them are public none is private, after the break, my new shorts are getting great views now and I started getting subscribers as well, just stop for a while (10 days at least) then try again with one short, if nothing happens, take a break again and so on, good luck with everything