This isn't a problem, more of a curiosity, but for some reason, my game now does the following:

1. Spawns tons of Afflicted Refugees - they are everywhere, constantly asking if my PC has finished ogling them and giving thanks they weren't attacked outright. There are far fewer encounters with other types of travelers (patrols, farmers, adventurers, mercenaries etc.). The are other types of NPCs walking the wilds, but way, way less.

2. The guards are almost always talking about how the Dawnguard is forming again ... 'vampire hunters or something'. I haven't started that quest and my PC isn't a vampire. There were far more diverse rumors and warnings from the guards in the vanilla game. My map was filled with scattered locations but not now.

I don't need to 'fix' this, just noticed it and am wondering if anyone else has run into it. I have some 40 or so mods going and I can't remember when this started. Having way too much fun to spend time diagnosing and trying to fix but FYI...

Are you using USLEEP? It was supposed to fix this bug with the Afflicted a long time ago with the following fix from the changelog

It's possible you have another mod overwriting this fix? You could check in xEdit by searching for the encounter using the editor id (WEJS14) and looking to see if anything is overwriting USLEEP.

Apparently the mod Timing is Everything overwrites the USLEEP fix.

As for the Dawnguard rumors, yes, its very annoying but normal until the player actually goes to the Fort.

That sounds familiar. Now that you mention it, I think I remember making my own personal patch in xEdit. I will have to check.

If you talk to the Afflicted refugee, the encounter will stop occurring.

Oh really? I never would have guessed. Great - that's easy enough. Thanks, will do.