OK, so there are some other problems. The countdown code won't work at all as is. Changing the date to a string causes it to display something. Add a large number to it, like in the coming soon page causes it to countdown and it appears that what needs to be done is that the date function in each case needs to be changed to something like seconds.
I finally got is to work by doing this instead of the examples ...
<script>
jQuery(document).ready( function($){
var t1 = new Date(2018, 3, 1);
var t2 = new Date();
var dif = t1.getTime() - t2.getTime();
$('#countdownprimary').countdown({until: dif/1000, format: 'OWDHMS'});
console.log($('#countdownprimary').countdown());
});
</script>