The alarms next to Stormy’s hospital bed would go off multiple times an hour, sometimes jolting her awake, but she always knew what they meant: Her lungs were failing to draw in enough air. Her body was starving for oxygen.

Breathe, she’d tell herself. It’s OK. You’ve got this. Just breathe.

Isolated from her family, the Vernal mom had to coach herself through COVID-19 minute by minute. She’d force herself to sit up higher in bed so she could inhale more deeply. And to calm her racing heart, she’d stuff AirPods in her ears and listen to hymns and other music that would normally relax her.

She tried to sound upbeat in her FaceTime calls with family, but she’d later discover her sister burst into tears the moment they hung up. After witnessing Stormy’s condition, her sister believed it would be their last conversation.

Even Stormy, who started each morning vowing to “kick [COVID’s] butt,” had to admit her strength had been slipping.

“I felt like somebody had their hand on my internal light,” she said. “And they were slowly dimming me out.”

The 37-year-old never pictured herself in that position — alone in a room at Ashley Regional Medical Center, the hospital where she worked as director of physician services. Even though she’d been near the front lines of the pandemic, she never saw herself falling seriously ill from the disease. She was relatively young, had no health problems and loved to pedal until her heart pounded during family mountain biking trips.

So when hospital workers became eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in mid-December, she opted out, feeling conflicted between her colleagues’ confidence in the shot and the concerns she was hearing from social media and others in her orbit.

“I’m not sure if I can ever really put my finger on why I was torn,” said Stormy, who The Salt Lake Tribune agreed to identify by her first name due to her concerns about backlash. “I do feel like at that time, I thought I would be OK if I had COVID. I’m young, and I’m healthy, and I was going to be OK.”

Unfortunately, and sometimes tragically, state leaders and health officials say hospitalizations like Stormy’s could be the one thing that finally persuades some people to drop their staunch opposition to the vaccine.

‘Trust the science’

That happened in St. George, after a 39-year-old police officer died from COVID-19 and his story moved others to become vaccinated. And The New York Times recently detailed the story of a Provo woman who described on Facebook changing her mind about vaccination, when her husband ended up hospitalized and gravely ill with the disease after the couple decided not to get inoculated.

Other unvaccinated people have less hardened opinions and have put off getting their shot because they’re worried about side effects or haven’t been able to fit it into their schedules. Some simply don’t think COVID-19 is a risk to them, and it takes a friend’s or relative’s illness to change their mind.

In any case, the emergence of the more infectious delta variant and the start of the school year have added urgency to the state’s vaccination campaign, as already exhausted health care workers watch their intensive care units fill up once again with COVID-19 patients. This time around, a powerful weapon existed to combat the virus, but most of the sick had refused it.

Whatever the reason someone ends up deciding to get vaccinated, experts say it typically comes down to established trust, whether that means listening to a doctor’s advice or watching a leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints get inoculated.

These community ties are all the more important with the erosion of confidence in science and medicine, said Deanna Kepka, an associate professor at the University of Utah Health and an investigator at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.

“We have the scientific power to save thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of lives,” said Kepka, who has studied vaccine resistance and ways of overcoming it. “We’re just not choosing to trust the science.”

About 69% of Utahns over age 11 have gotten at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, putting the state slightly behind the national average. Recently, the state’s daily number of vaccine doses — as averaged over the previous seven days — has increased by about 7,000 new shots. But that’s still less than a quarter of the 30,000 daily doses administered during the state’s peak vaccination activity.

For months, Utah health officials have been conducting surveys to gauge how many people are still open to getting the vaccine and why others are closed off to it.

The numbers haven’t budged much. About 17% of the adults surveyed from late June through July said they hadn’t been vaccinated and had no plans to get a shot. Tom Hudachko, a state health department spokesman, said those levels of vaccine resistance have been relatively stable over time, wavering between about 15% and 17% depending on the week.

Roughly another 6% of the recent survey respondents say they plan to get vaccinated, even though they haven’t gotten around to it yet. That’s the group the health department is working hardest to reach, Hudachko said.

To target people who have struggled to find time for vaccination, state and local health departments are trying to make the process more convenient and sites more accessible, Hudachko said. Officials provide pop-up vaccination sites upon request, holding them at businesses, schools and clinics, and have integrated vaccinations into some of the state’s coronavirus testing locations.

They’re also asking the business community to help out by assuring employees that they’ll have paid time off to get the vaccine and recover from any side effects.

Health officials won’t abandon the rest of the unvaccinated population, he added, but they do recognize that a chunk of those individuals “are probably not going to be moved” no matter the outreach effort.

‘Pump the brakes’

Of those people who still want the shot, the largest portion — slightly more than a quarter — have held off because they’re worried about the side effects, according to last month’s survey results. Another 19% cited their work schedules as a barrier, while about 13% said they were in a “wait and see” mode.

The COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Though the agency has identified extremely rare instances of blood clotting after the Johnson & Johnson shot, experts say the dangers of contracting the coronavirus far outweigh any risk associated with the vaccine.

But Robert, 40, a commercial airline pilot from Saratoga Springs, is one of those Utahns who needed more time before feeling comfortable.

While his initial plan was to get a vaccine as soon as he qualified for one, he changed his mind after a preschool teacher in his community began experiencing debilitating neurological problems after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine in a clinical trial.

That was enough to convince him to “pump the brakes a little bit and just kind of see what happens,” said Robert, The Tribune also agreed to identify by his first name.

He did recognize the danger of contracting COVID-19 but was also worried about vaccine side effects, especially because he has to stay in good health to pass physical exams for his job.

“My career, my earning potential, my ability to support my family is entirely dependent on being able to pass a physical exam every year that the [Federal Aviation Administration] mandates,” he said in an interview last month. “If I had a normal job, I would have been vaccinated already.”

Working for the airline is his “dream job,” he said. He lived in his parents’ basement in college so he could scrape together enough money for flying and spent more than a decade in the Navy, moving his family eight times, as he built up his credentials.

If something were to happen, he worries about losing a job he’d sacrificed so much for and not having any recourse to seek compensation from the federal government or vaccine manufacturer.

So he was stuck in limbo for a while, weighing the benefits of inoculation against his concerns.

Then, the emergence of the delta variant changed the equation for him. The climbing numbers of new cases, the infectiousness of the new coronavirus strain and the start of school combined to intensify his sense of the disease’s threat to the community and his family.

Robert went to a local pharmacy to get his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in July and returned for a second dose last week.

He’s glad he has greater protection against COVID-19 and is comforted by this week’s announcement that the Pfizer vaccine has final Food and Drug Administration approval after previously being distributed under an emergency authorization. Still, he has lingering questions about the long-term effects of the shot.

“This whole situation has just been frustrating. I’ve always desired to get vaccinated because I feel that’s the patriotic and moral thing to do, but I believe my situation as an airline pilot is unique,” he said. “Ultimately, my top priority and responsibility lies with providing for my family. The conflict between the two has been difficult to navigate.”

‘Keep trying’

The established trust between patients and their primary care providers is the most important tool for overcoming vaccine hesitancy, Kepka said. But personal stories are the next best thing and can even change people who seem deeply entrenched, she explained.

“I always say, don’t just put someone in a box as the anti-vaxxer family,” Kepka tells clinics during trainings on vaccination. “Keep trying, because life happens, and it affects people’s attitudes and their intentions and what they think is best for their child or for themselves.”

Stormy — who contracted the disease in December, just a couple of weeks after she turned down her first chance at the vaccine — said her personal battle with the disease gave her a change of perspective.

Though her condition kept deteriorating in the days after her positive test, feelings of guilt and shame flooded her when she thought about becoming becoming a patient in the hospital where she worked. She kept trying to battle the infection from home, but her strength continued to wane until she couldn’t even stand in the shower or walk to the bathroom.

When she finally agreed to go into the emergency room, she avoided making eye contact with her husband as she climbed out of their truck and headed inside.

“I did not want that to be my goodbye,” she said.

The doctors diagnosed her with double pneumonia and sepsis. And although she recovered enough to go back home in about a day, she was back in the hospital several weeks later when she started coughing up blood because of a clot in her lungs.

Stormy said she still experiences lingering symptoms. Her co-workers used to call her “speedy” and tease her about her brisk pace. Now, climbing up a flight of stairs leaves her winded, and she hasn’t gone mountain biking with her family since before her illness.

Months later, she agreed to share her story on her local health department’s YouTube channel, despite her fears about the potential backlash against her. She’s glad she did. People have come up to her in the grocery store to let her know that her account convinced a relative or friend to get the shot, she said.

And while she’s still waiting on a doctor’s approval to be inoculated, those closest to her have changed their minds and chosen to get the shot, she said.

She respects each person’s right to make a decision about getting the vaccine but wants people to understand what it can mean to forgo it.

Her husband and children all had the virus and experienced little more than itchy throats and body aches, while it felt like she came down with almost every symptom COVID-19 could throw at her. She might never understand why.

“I gambled. I rolled the dice, and I lost,” she said. “I struggle with that decision daily.”