Visual Studio Code debugger with Chrome refused to connect to localhost

I've tried several suggestions on other posts to no avail.

I have a 9 month old project that no longer shows in the browser from F5 debugging in vs code.

I set up a brand new simple project with an index.html file to try to get Visual Studio code to launch it in a Chrome browser window.

I keep getting an error page in chrome that says:

This site can’t be reached localhost refused to connect. Did you mean http://localhost8000.com/? Search Google for localhost 8000 ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

launch.json:

    {
    // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
    // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
    // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "type": "chrome",
            "request": "launch",
            "name": "Launch Chrome against localhost",
            "url": "http://localhost:8000",
            "webRoot": "${workspaceFolder}"
        }
    ]
}

index.html:

hello world!!!!!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!