I (32F) am a physician working on COVID-19 cases, and my (32M) SO wants me to debunk this pandemic using my medical background to his friends but I refused. He broke up with me because of that.

For context, I live in Asia and my SO is in the US. We’ve been in a relationship for almost 4 years, working on an LDR. We got engaged last year, and had a baby that I unfortunately miscarried. We were supposed to be married this year until this pandemic hit.

So for the past few months, my Ex has been obsessed in trying to prove that the whole COVID pandemic is a hoax. He’s been “educating” himself with conspiracy podcasts and youtube videos. I never tried to engage him in an intellectual argument over this because I believe that one is entitled to his opinion. To be fair, he doesn’t just gobble up all the things those videos say, he asks for my medical opinion about it and accepts if i debunk it with scientific evidence. However, he is so obsessed in “proving” that the PCR method we use now to detect the presence of SARS-Cov-2 RNA is fake and being used by the CDC to deceive people and pad up cases in the US.

Now, my ex is smart but his highest educational attainment is high school. I didn’t care because I believed his skills as a mechanic is just as good as a college education. My pre-med is medical laboratory science, and I had specialised training in microbiology and virology. By all means I’m no expert, but i have a good background about the pandemic happening now. I told him calmly that he was right to deduce that the RNA we elongate using PCR will not tell if the virus is highly infectious at that point, or if they’re just dead viral fragments that got retained. And at this point, our means to accurately detect it is about 60-70% because although we have an idea how to handle it, we give it a 30-40% leeway for mistakes because this is a new or a novel coronavirus. We still needed to correlate the case clinically.

And that was it. He latched on to the 60-70% and has been telling his friends that his fiancée can prove that the testing is faulty and we’re all being herded like sheep in this “plandemic”. I have friends, doctors and nurses alike about my age that died from this infection, and hearing my then SO say things about that is like a knife stab in the heart. I honestly don’t know how it is in the US, but from where I am at, the overflowing hospitals and amount of sick people is enough proof that it is real. So I told him calmly that he can’t go around saying things like that because he doesn’t even have an idea how PCR works.

And that was it, he snapped and broke off with me because I said that. He felt that I was belittling him because I have all this education and yada yada. But he has never even stood in a laboratory, let alone hold a petri dish, to be acting like an expert about something as complex as PCR. All he is basing his “expertise” about PCR are all from conspiracy articles, podcasts, videos, and of course — me.

I’m asking for advice because I’m very hurt that despite all the years, 30hr plane rides to see each other, and a miscarriage — something trivial as being corrected about PCR is enough to break all that. I’m so confused if I did anything wrong or if the relationship was doomed in the first place and it was the last straw. To be honest, I miss him and we haven’t been talking for weeks. Should I let the relationship go, or is this something still fixable? I still cry at night and this has added to my depression. Exhaustion from hospital work isn’t helping either.

Thank you all for your kind advise.