Vanguard

That's two people who self-poisoned versus the reportedly 100% success rate of doctor-supervised patients on the Chloroquine + Azithromycin cocktail.
 
Sadly, more panic-buying in that story.
 
Humans are awful when they're in herd-panic mode.

There is another tactical reason for bladed weapons in technological battle: silence. No report, no flare, no warning the comrades of your target. Perfect for stealth kills.
 
Of course the modern tools of war are more knives than swords. Then again, some large knives still in use in combat, like the Gurkha kukri, are practically short swords.

It wasn't really; IIRC there were examples in the series of victories scored with axes, knives, or just gross overall damage to the body.  I suppose that immortals who can't surprise each other and spent most of their existence at a pre-industrial tech level would focus on training with the best available portable decapitation tool, which would be some kind of sword.  Logically, after 1870 it would make more sense to disable opponents with gunfire and then complete the decapitation with an axe or knife, but ultimately the entire point of the backstory is to justify swordfights between immortals.

The doctors at covidtrial dot io have apparently come up with a solid treatment using already available medications.
 
Granted the sample size is small, but the results look amazing.
 
 

How many cases were actual cases and how many are just people panicking and clogging up the facility?
 
Triage is usually the initial assessment of possible patients who are then categorized by severity and then moved to treatment.  It's a way to identify and filter not only patients in order of severity, but also to ID and turn away people who do not actually need medical care so that treatment assets (personnel, materials and time) are not wasted. 
 
From what I have read, youngsters are weathering this fairly easily and many of the younger children that have been identified as having it do not even show any symptoms.  And yet parents are flocking to ER's everytime they see a sniffle.
 
Before I get all concerned I'd like to know exactly how they are defining "reaching triage point". 
 
 

Not that the two are mutually exclusive, of course.

This is important:
 
It’s COVID-19, not CORVID-19. A corvid is of the crow family. 19 crows are not gathering to kill you.

But if they are...it’s a murder.

It's not just toilet paper: People line up to buy guns, ammo over coronavirus concerns
 
This makes me nervous. The only thing worse than a fool with a gun, is a panicked fool with a gun.

Dude, if there was a sudden epidemic of a diarrhea virus, they'd start hoarding shampoo and mustache wax.
 
 

I know folks often sneer at 'thoughts and prayers' given how some folks use that as a cop out , but I think they sure couldn't hurt

Swine flu
Bird flu
H1N1
 
Yes; they're bad. 
 
But thus far, all of them have achieved the same level of frenzy and terror, and none of them have lived up to the hysteria the media created. 
 
Be smart; be intelligent; don't do dumb things.   But dont look for a species-sending plague, either. 
 
Just my two unprofessional cents worth. 

You're onto something here.
 
When I first started playing Hero (it was Champions), the GM at the time explained what it was and he said "for me, the best part about the game, which makes it better than D&D, is that you can create the character YOU want.  Right out of the gate".
 
So this is something that could be focused on.  The pros of the game system and what makes it unique/different from the "mainstream" games out there.
 

What genre is your game? Time frame (Current year? war time 1940's? 1980's? before internet?) involved, could they have high tech ear gadgets for communicating back & forth when not all together. 
 
Anything that keeps the players attention on the game is good stuff!
 
I used to have a player who would goof off while we were going through phases, and when his turn came up, he'd inevitably say, "What's happening?"  I took it a couple times then started saying your holding your phase till you know what you want to do. And move on...

Just a comment
 
I had a player once who asked for other player input.  He basically said, "My Int is at best a 13.  I am playing a 23 Int character.  I could use the help."

Yes and no.  While I would not design the game around revealing or maintaining their secrets, building their backgrounds into scenarios makes the game more focused on the characters.  If a character has KS's of Japanese history, geography and culture, and speaks Japanese, it would be a shame to have the whole campaign proceed with no link to Japan, ever.

I'm of the opinion that giving new players (any players really, but mainly new players) access to information out-of-character that they don't have in-character is a Bad Idea.  They're learning to pretend to be their characters, don't make them multitask by also pretending to not know things.  The human brain is not good at having-but-not-using information because it's very good at having-and-using information. 
 
That said, I feel that the sharing-of-secrets is a great way to bring a party together.  I'd personally suggest running adventures early on in which revealing parts of the background will make things much easier, then follow that up with reveal-adventures wherein the secrets come to light.