This is what free markets enable, in times of pandemic this is unacceptable.
That is what the free markets enable, and that is why they are even more important during pandemics and other crises.
Sure, but that does take time, during which hospital stuff and immunocompromised people don't have masks.
People couldn't sit on stock for very long because other people were flooding the market as fast as they could.
There was simply scarcity and that's it. State's had their procurement and price enforcement procedures all wrong while they sat idly for the Federal Government to procure for them, it never happened and that is what cost the most time.
The better version of events was that states assumed this level of autonomy at the very beginning and ramped up their own domestic production back in January. They created credits for this kind of production in the private sector, while also subsidizing a retail cost above a certain price, creating a ceiling for consumers. None of this happened and this affected the medical workers and immunocompromised greater than any entrepreneur hoarder could.
The "hoarders" were taking just as big of a risk as the people that took the risk to create and sell.
You are missing the point that the necessary stock did not exist. Pointing the finger at people hoarding supplies merely deflects the incompetence to a phantom boogeyman.
I'm still unconvinced that price gouging during an emergency is beneficial overall.
Regardless, it was already illegal in California.
The legal reality was more nuanced than the governor, legislature and DA ever imagined because prior emergencies were never larger than an isolated area. This market distortion covered the entire state indefinitely and crossed state lines, their power was much more limited than they imagined.
They thought the federal government was going to solve this for the states and were wrong and this cost the states months, especially California due to its size and population, which is still realigning and adjusting to self-autonomy and procurement while being ahead of many other states.
When an emergency is endless with all hope for resolution being a complete lie due to not having a plan, needing to placate the population longer and not having data to create a plan all while the scope of the emergency is expanding, a market has to continue functioning as normal with its primary feature being to signal to people - yes, even middlemen - that their ability to source and/or create supply is worth their time and energy as opposed to doing literally anything else
Thats what happened
Some jurisdictions created novel more holistic solutions by shielding the consumers from price shocks by the government absorbing/subsidizing the price over a floor. It was foolish of representatives to try to use their existing tools of short term price controls as if a storm just hit a small area of their state, as this just caused confusion and made the market more opaque.