Catalina localhost ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

I have seen a number of threads that are close but no answer quite hit the mark for my issue. I have a MacOS AMP environment for testing that was setup using homebrew and that had been working swimmingly in Catalina since about January. Then about a month ago, after a "minor" Catalina update (and resulting crash), I got ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED when trying to access http://localhost (and 127.0.0.1 in case you are wondering about the hosts file). At the time this happened, one thread I read suggested it could have something to do with the AV software. After I uninstalled the AV software, I was once again able to access localhost. Problem solved...or so I thought. Because after the latest Catalina update, I am once again not able to access. Thing is, I never reinstalled the AV program. The MacOS firewall is off. Apache and PHP error logs are clear. $ sudo apachectl configtest Returns > Syntax OK Any other ideas? Thanks in advance.