That's getting absurd. The supply of a widget that I just made of paperclip at $1M apiece will never outstrip supply, even though there's just one of such widgets, because there's exactly zero demand at that price. You can define any shortage out of existence this way.

Perhaps your point is that, on a free market, the supply and demand will always meet at the right price point. Yes, that works long-term. Short-term, it doesn't, because sellers have every reason to look at the first and second derivative of the price - to hold off selling until they believe the demand for a product is about to reach its peak - and only then actually sell out their supply. This of course will cause the prices to go down, but by that time, the emergency may just be over, and a lot of people who needed the product then will have suffered and/or died.

The way I see it, this is literally the same mechanism stock trading is based on, and yet nobody here seems to have a problem understanding it there. Supply and demand, right? So if I know the demand tomorrow will be larger than today, I'll hold off selling my stocks, and I'll hold them until the point I see demand starting to fall back down.