On March 11, Gavin Heavin, the co-founder of the fitness company Curves International, appeared on a program to promote a view heard on the fringes of the right-wing media: that coronavirus was engineered by enemies of the president to discredit him.

“We know that it’s a weaponized virus because we see the RNA strands that were put into this virus from HIV, from MERS and from the SARS virus. There’s no way this could have happened in nature.”

Coronavirus, according to Heavin, was produced by those “who want to destroy Trump’s presidency.” But Heavin, whose business will be hit hard as millions of Americans avoid exercising in gyms, went even further.

“I’m trying to get to Trump to make him aware that this is not a non-event. This is a very nefarious act against him,” Heavin said, adding, “This virus was designed to kill primarily Asian people. Now the problem is it’s going to kill a lot of Europeans and non-Asian people because it’s still lethal. But that’s one more evidence that it was designed as a bioweapon to attack China.”