Vue Fetch Behaving differently on Local vs. Deployed - arrays

Question

I feel that I am implementing Vuex Store or async-await incorrectly.
My goal is to pull a set of badges (we call them patches) from my content management service. I need the list to be up to date whenever a new badge is added in the future (which will be infrequent but not never). I don't know how to make a check that will refresh the list whenever the current badge count is different from the number of badges in the cms but that is beside the current problem.
I have an array, rawPatches, in Vuex that should only be built if rawPatches.length <= 0. Once built it should have 60 items pulled from my content management service. This seems to work fine when I do npm run dev on my local machine. However, once pushed to the development site and compiled through Netlify, the array is messed up. When I visit another page and come back to where the length check is the array has an extra 60 items. So when I leave and come back twice then the array has 180 items, and so on and so forth. Also, when I close the window and then come back the incorrect count remains. I guess this means that the Vuex State is cached? I don't know if the length check doesn't get executed or if the array doesn't exist when the check happens but then does exist when new items are added because I'm awaiting the build function. I really have no idea what is going on but I have been trying to sort it out for a few months and am ripping my hair out.
I am using async-await because readPersonalPatches relies on the patches being in Vuex Store.
index.js
export const state = () => ({
rawPatches: [],
});
export const mutations = {
addToArray: (state, payload) => {
state[payload.arr].push(payload.value);
},
}
export const actions = {
async readPatches({ commit, state }) {
console.log('inside of readPatches', state.rawPatches.length);
const patches = await this.$content('patches').fetch();
patches.forEach((patch) => {
commit('addToArray', { arr: 'rawPatches', value: patch });
if (patch.categories) {
if (
JSON.stringify(patch.categories).includes('orbit') ||
JSON.stringify(patch.categories).includes('point')
) {
commit('addToArray', { arr: 'geographicPatches', value: patch });
}
}
if (patch.isSecret) {
commit('addToArray', { arr: 'secretPatches', value: patch });
}
});
console.log('After adding patches', state.rawPatches);
},
}
header component
async fetch() {
console.log('Does this work?');
try {
console.log('length', this.rawPatches.length <= 0);
if (this.rawPatches.length <= 0) {
await this.readPatches({ context: this.$nuxt.context });
}
this.readPersonalPatches();
} catch (error) {
console.log(error);
}
},
Locally, the console reads:
Does this work?
length true
inside of readPatches 0
after reading patches [...]
However, the console is blank on the dev server.
Thank you for any help with this!!