How is the story you linked anything like arresting people for taking this seriously? Not having adequate testing early on is not the same as arresting good samaritans.
> Federal and state officials said the flu study could not be repurposed because it did not have explicit permission from research subjects; the labs were also not certified for clinical work. While acknowledging the ethical questions, Dr. Chu and others argued there should be more flexibility in an emergency during which so many lives could be lost. On Monday night, state regulators told them to stop testing altogether.
While the researches weren't arrested, they were obstructed and then prohibited from continuing to test even though they helped uncover a major outbreak.
This is not a prohibition on testing to protect the egos of politicians, this is a refusal of authorization for a specific medical practice, because of bureaucracy. They are not being reprimanded for speaking their mind, they are literally being published in the New York Times.
There is no moral equivalence between these two things. Nobody is barred from expressing whatever knowledge they have of the outbreak by anything except their own professional agreements.
No reasonable parallel is drawn between the total suppression of independent expression about an outbreak, and a regulator inflexibly deciding that a clinical professional is not qualified to practice some field.
While the researches weren't arrested, they were obstructed and then prohibited from continuing to test even though they helped uncover a major outbreak.