A report by a website called, National Report published four days ago, saying that 17 kindergarten students fell violently ill and tested positive for the Ebola virus in Wortham, TX is absolutely false.

Image/The Global Dispatch
Image/The Global Dispatch

The fake story claims that the schoolchildren were exposed to the deadly disease after sharing classrooms with a female Liberian foreign exchange student.

This is NOT real!

The sensationalized report comes from the site , NationalReport.net, is a satirical news website which posts articles about fictional events. The website was founded by Allen Montgomery in 2013.

The site’s disclaimer notes:

*DISCLAIMER: National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news.

Snopes.com reports “National Report is a fake news site that publishes sensational, made-up stories.”

Unfortunately, this tasteless piece of satire received 1.7 million, yes million “shares”. Even more unfortunate, many people bought into it.

One commenter writes sounding distraught- ” Are you kidding me?! Those poor babies!!! How stupid are the officials for allowing borders to be crossed and exchange students in from ground zero. How awful for that little girl and now the other families affected. Time to close borders of Texas! Seriously!”

Then another commenter tried to add to the hysteria writing about cases in Boston–“Guys I’m in Boston and 2 kids already have Ebola in my kid’s class. There were federal agents at the school who were taking blood samples of all the students we didn’t even know about and couldn’t go near the school!!!!! THEN!! They transferred the original 2 kids with Ebola to 2 separate schools to SPREAD IT MORE!!! “, prompting someone to actually respond, “Federal agents were taking blood?”