Laws prohibiting "scalping" or "price gouging" in emergencies often makes problems worse by incentivizing hoarding and disincentivizing more suppliers from entering the market.
Price gouging laws target the products with most serious risk of shortages and guarantee shortages. I think back to the gas pipeline shutdown earlier this year, and how simply that could have been a non-issue if stations had been allowed to raise prices.
The problem is one of optics - if life-essentials were allowed to be price-gouged, the local gov't officials get blamed for not instituting price control during the period of shortage. Even if the shortage would've been worse had there been price control!