In each module employing a priming read at 'new' time,
should that read fail, a call to 'unref' will be made.
However, there is a hidden dependency that these calls
must never occur before the context 'refcount' was set
due to the way an 'unref' conditional was constructed.
So this commit just ensures that 'unref' will function
as expected, even if called with a 'refcount' of zero.
Signed-off-by: Jim Warner <james.warner@comcast.net>