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"Deadly" is fine.

Having no realistic option you can possibly take if you get x instance in the game is not fine.

At minimum, the grace time needs to be longer.  The reason is the same as the reason for the existence of the passive cooler.

in the first season. There is no penoxycline... there is no glitterworld medicine, there are no traders or any of these things unless you get extremely lucky.

A16 made your faction finally able to dictate WHEN you traded with others.  It also made you NEED to trade with others (or risk the silent, disease death that befell so many isolated civilizations in history)

I do think that plague should probably have about a 20 day minimum grace period before hitting, but i also think that you could generally call a caravan to you or more likely, visit a nearby outlander town within the first 10 days easily.  I'm not saying you HAVE to settle next to one...even a 20 hex march isn't too bad considering the first season is spring or summer by default (or you're in hot enough climate that season doesn't affect travel time).

It isn't fun just "losing" - of course not.  But how would you change it so that disease is more survivable for tribals, but still an actual threat for the survivor type colony?  A longer grace period still "forces trading" it just gives you more time to do it.  Modifying the diseases less deadly or medicine more effective completely removes disease as an actual threat for survivors.

A longer grace period is all it "needs", as in plague would not be completely unsurvivable then.  You have more time to set up, more time to trade more distant target locations, and enough time to research penoxy yourself.  Right now a tribe with scheduled researching can complete every tech in the game in ~ 3 years (faster if you double up on benches, but that's not too realistic or necessary).  If you give them 2 seasons then stonecutting --> drug production --> penoxy is an attainable path, sacrificing electricity being available earlier.  However, tribes can survive anything other than ice sheet/sea ice a long term w/o electricity.  They can not survive early game plague.

So a tribe that isn't in a position to trade fast would then want to prioritize penoxy or take the risk of dying to disease.  In contrast to the current configuration, that's challenging and conditional, but not entirely unreasonable/optionless.

and now add in the spray pattern of the weapons
and Charge rifles are even FAR more superior to assault rifles in dps.

They are easily superior in DPS.  ARs win out in range and also in windup/cooldown.  The latter is pretty important for popping out of doors to take potshots on manhunters or raiders attacking walls/doors.  AR can actually peak out, fire, and duck before a sniper can fire whatsoever, and if the enemy isn't "waiting" for you then it can trivially free-fire on almost any weapon and duck in time.

The machine pistol is even better in the free pot shots role but it doesn't have the range.

The other bad aspect is that you get hit with extended downtime, which interferes with the gameplay in general.  Sleeping sickness is particularly vexing, because unless you're running proxy trades for penoxy cycling (until you make enough your own), it's guaranteed long stretches of downtime.  Player interaction and monitoring of pawns is a core experience in the game, so more than halving it while introducing time-precision micromanagement is probably why people don't consider it fun.

I dislike toxic fallout for similar reasons.  It's less colony threatening than many events, but requires roofing + zone micromanagement + constant swapping in and out of zones unless you're getting it so late that you have a 100% sufficient indoor colony.

In my opinion...my second assertation above is fine.  You can't balance the game around tribals AND survivors.  If something is a challenge for tribals, it is a non-issue for colonists.  If something is a challenge for colonists, it is deadly for tribals.  The game NEEDS to be this way.  Otherwise tribal really becomes no different than survivors. 

Further, Tynan already TRIED to address this.  He TRIED to make diseases a real threat.  He lowered the effectiveness of that easy-to-obtain medicine, while keeping the hard to get stuff really strong.  He then added a PREVENTATIVE measure that also represents a significant cost (penoxycyline).  Suddenly the game had a real, tangible tradeoff: 1) ignore penoxycyline and work to try to fight diseases off with only meds - and hope. 2) use penoxycyline on your doctor...ALL the time.

No.  You do not need tribals and survivors to be the same.  What you do need is something, anything at all, a tribe can *consistently* do to hedge against disease, just like there are ways to *consistently* hedge against cold, heat, and raids.  All of those are more challenging for tribes by a margin.  All of them are doable if you take the correct action.

Season 1 tribe disease has absolutely no counter-play unless you game it by plopping down near an outlander settlement guaranteed to have it.

"Don't pick this option unless you settle near another colony or it's expected that you die at random with nothing you can do about it.  It's totally fine to just insta-lose on RNG because reasons that don't apply in every other aspect of the game system" is not a rational, self-consistent position.

So what is the solution?  The short term solution is to put disease on a timer, so you can't get it within 1-2 seasons.  Tribes that invest straight for electricity/other avenues and fail to trade for penoxy within a year or so then risk death, but have a CHANCE to avoid 2/3 of the colony dying by RNG with no counter option, just like they have a chance to defend guns or heat waves.

You can totally get penoxy by 2nd season on any biome except sea ice and maybe ice sheet as a tribe.  But there's nothing you can do if it's not cargo dropped/tradeable and you get disease earlier than that.

Is it broken indeed?

It is plague - very deadly disease.
Tribals are primitive folk on rimwolds, it is basically expected that diseases may be harmful, especially the most deadly one.

Yes.  From a design perspective "sorry you lose" without counterplay is poor design, especially in a game that is usually very, very good about punishing you for mistakes and allowing you to survive if you adequately prepare.  Its tuning being off is not unreasonable given this game isn't even beta yet, but in its current form it's detrimental to the "prepare or die" setup the game uses in most cases.

Plague right now is similar to heat waves before the passive cooler existed.

Or put another way: are you making a case that it should be impossible for tribes to defend from enemy raids since they have guns, or that enemy tribal raids should be easily trounced as long as you have an automatic or two?  No?  Then don't try to make a case that plague is ok "because tribe".  Argue it from a gameplay perspective, and you'll see it's broken.

While most necessary organs/limbs can be replaced — beyond the brain, of course — are you really of the opinion that even the most advanced Rimworld colony will have the resources for plastic surgery, much less one or more doctors with that extremely specific, rather difficult skill?

I find it hard to believe that replacing a nose is harder than replacing a lung, bionic parts (which we don't have in effect today), especially stuff like eyes.  You'd have to be painstakingly interacting with nerves in a way that's only decently understood today using tech that doesn't exist yet.  In contrast, while it's not easy work plastic surgery is relatively common compared to replacing a lung!

Though permanent maiming seems to fit the spirit of the game, and most things ARE replace-able.

Plague is broken for tribal.  You settle near an outlander colony to trade for penoxycillin, or you die at random.

When you have 4 people get plague and 1 is your doctor, herbal medicine offers no consistent means of rescuing people, even if you sac your doctor you're likely to lose almost everyone who gets it.

If you do immediately take penoxycillin, you can basically ignore the plague.  No need for hospital beds or further micromanagement, as long as you take it as soon as plague appears and don't force your pawns into exhaustion they only get to "major" without further effort before becoming immune.

This wouldn't be too unreasonable if there were a minimum time requirement before the game can go "here, you lose" in the first 2-3 seasons.