Price gouging is accepted normally. It's just temporarily prohibited for the duration of an emergency for the products related to that emergency.
Most emergencies are sufficiently short-term that they don't meaningfully reduce incentives for new producers to enter a market, because there's no time to adapt. E.g. an hour before a hurricane strikes, the price of water bottles and gas won't motivate new producers to enter a market, but there's a social interest to keep these prices stable.
The main problem here is a prolonged "emergency with default rules" that's happening now, because the default rules are targeted at short emergenices. It's reasonable to announce an emergency now and figure out the details later; but now it's been many months and the "later" should have already arrived with specific "pandemic laws" replacing the generic emergency laws, but that's been problematic in many areas.
Most emergencies are sufficiently short-term that they don't meaningfully reduce incentives for new producers to enter a market, because there's no time to adapt. E.g. an hour before a hurricane strikes, the price of water bottles and gas won't motivate new producers to enter a market, but there's a social interest to keep these prices stable.
The main problem here is a prolonged "emergency with default rules" that's happening now, because the default rules are targeted at short emergenices. It's reasonable to announce an emergency now and figure out the details later; but now it's been many months and the "later" should have already arrived with specific "pandemic laws" replacing the generic emergency laws, but that's been problematic in many areas.