Two main issues combined to cause the NPM problems: NPM didn't cache 404 responses, so they were much more expensive than normal fetches, and VS Code issued way

Two main issues combined to cause the NPM problems: NPM didn't cache 404 responses, so they were much more expensive than normal fetches, and VS Code issued way too many requests which resulted in 404s. Both have been addressed -- NPM handles 404s better now, and VS Code will no longer request packages which don't exist (by downloading the registry package once). Either fix would have be sufficient, but having both is better.