Alas, I have concluded what many have already indicated was the solution: Uninstall Malwarebytes Premium. All of the bizarre OS and Edge behaviors stopped. Besides the resolving hosts issue, my PC immediately started booting faster. Edge started loading faster - much faster. Windows Explorer stopped crashing.
I still have McAfee Complete Protection so my system is relatively safe. Given all the problems with Malwarebytes Premium and the various system behaviors I wonder if Malwarebytes has a memory leak or if Windows 10 still crippled with respect to loading 32 bit applications in lower memory is the issue. Another possibility is that Malwarebytes assembler routine fail to push and pop registers it uses and variably steps on other interrupt calls by other software using the same interrupt. I have seen this before.
Still it saddens me because Malwarebytes used to be a great system protection utility. Now it is its own form of malware.