A look through site backups showed that concurrently with publishing issue described above, a fast/inaccurate increase in display of “# on page / # on site” elements was occurring.
Appears similar to the issue covered here - A ghosted bug which you couldn't see — total element count is inaccurate
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Here is the stat at july4th.1149PM.PST — showing correct # of elements (57)
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The save (july5th.1230AM.PST) prior to the last publish showed an increase to of 4 to 61 overall elements coinciding with an addition of a symbol which only contained 2 instances of the element.
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After the site stopped publishing these numbers quickly increased, concurrently with addition of 4-5 symbols. At july5th.116AM.PST:
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July5th.344am.PST
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july5th.150pm.PST
etc.