According to the Times, in interviews over a one-week period “nearly two dozen Asian-Americans across the country said they were afraid “to go grocery shopping, to travel alone on subways or buses, to let their children go outside. Many described being yelled at in public — a sudden spasm of hate that is reminiscent of the kind faced by American Muslims, Arabs and South Asians in the United States after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

Trump has said he used the term as a slap back at Chinese officials who claimed that the American military was the source of the outbreak of the virus that has claimed more than 500,000 lives in the U.S. and millions worldwide.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder and director of AAPI Data, told NBC News that use of the term by members of the Trump administration served to fuel the notion that Asian Americans were somehow responsible for the virus.

“What Trump did is that he weaponized it in a way,” Ramakrishnan said. “Trump’s rhetoric helps set a certain narrative in place — and presidents have an outsized role in terms of shaping the narrative.”

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