People who price gouge are highly incentivized to go buy all the stock in a community and resell it on the internet. That guy in the NYT article essentially drove to all these out of the way places and cleaned out their stock.
Allowing price gouging would not result in more of that stock being available on the shelves - responsible retailers and distributors know better, and behave better than that - they make all of their available stock, and when they run out - they run their factories at 100% to try and catch up.
Note - I have zero issue with ticket scalping - love the fact that there is a free market where people can buy and sell tickets at the price the market can bear. Also have zero issue with a free market in general - it encourages new suppliers to come in when prices go up, and consumers to find relative substitutes - things find an equilibrium.
What I have a problem with is people taking advantage of an emergency or shortage, in such a way that further increases the shortage of items that are critical to people's health and well being, people who may not be able to afford to go out an pay 10x prices on amazon for something like a mask or hand cleaner.
