Being banned from Twitter is a badge of honor among some conservatives, however, and it did little to stop Mr. Kirk, who declined an interview request for this article. Even as the president and his media allies have oscillated between dismissing the alarm over the virus as anti-Trump hysteria and acknowledging the gravity of the threat — with conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich calling for a “culture war cease-fire” — Mr. Kirk has remained insistent that the measures taken to stop the spread of the pandemic are more damaging than the virus itself.

The vast majority of Americans have heeded the advice of public-health officials to stay away from one another, helping slow the spread of the pandemic. Mr. Kirk has at times been among those voices, warning young people in March to take the virus seriously and not party on beaches.

But he has also fed the growing frustration in some quarters with stay-at-home orders. Mr. Kirk was an early and eager voice for reopening the economy, and last week urged on protesters who took to the streets in Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio. He spent the days leading up to Easter arguing that social-distancing prohibitions against church services were part of a Democratic plot against Christianity. “This China Flu event has given state and local secularists in positions of authority the opportunity they have been waiting for,” he wrote in an essay for Newsweek, where he is a contributor.

China has remained a target for Mr. Kirk. He has echoed the Trump campaign’s attacks on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, saying he is soft on China. Earlier this month, he repeated a baseless conspiracy theory that the authorities in Wuhan were burning patients.

“THIS is what the American media is defending,” he wrote on Twitter, exhorting his followers to repost his message and “expose the truth!”