The sellers arent parasites. There are the resellers, the manufacturers, the workers, and/or smart economical preppers. Its question of the supply and the demand. Everyone had equally a chance to buy plenty of soap when it was $1. Just like everyone equally had the chance to buy Bitcoin when it was $1. Its capitalism. Supply and demand moves the prices.
The parasites are selling $20 soap!
Picture by Prepper Veteran UK, from the Swag shop in Walsall
This product limits the spread of the infection. This price is too expensive for some people...
If you sell your monthly supply for $1 within 10 minutes, that still didnt helped the problem. Also, another problem is that it will not generate you notable profit. If there is demand to buy your product on higher prices, then you will just sell it for higher prices. Why would you work for hourly $1 profit, when you can earn hourly $20 profit? The profit on your product, multiplied with the number of sold product, will make your salary. There is a sweet spot, where at the given price, you can earn the most profit.
The guy who was selling the infected meat, was just trying to make a living too.
I think thats a bad comparison. Deliberately selling a defected, risky, dangerous product, advertised as healthy product, its a scam, its illegal, and immoral. These soaps are fine products. They do what they are advertised for.
If you cut your body
This situation is natural. It even happens in basic biology. When someone partially cuts his body and the blood flows out, then there is a temporarly rush. The body ramps up the hearth rate and muscles to try maintaining the blood pressure. Of course the body does not knows that there is a large hole where the blood flows away. It also pushes every resources into the blood for more efficient oxigen flow... But this just causes the blood to flow away even faster, basically wasting the ability of the body to heal. Trying to ramp up the blood pressure is the nature's analogue to the situation where people are mass buying toilet paper, when the tourism and catering industry closes down and millions get unemployed. Failed reactions to the failed commands of a failing system. At the end, the body system wastes a big chunk of lethal backups, before it realizes that everything just flowing away. Then it finally minimalizes the blood pressure and oxigen consumption, forces everything to idle. The healing is slow after that point. At that time, the problem is already much bigger than originally was, due to the overreaction.
The price uplift is too big, its not understandable
As you can see on the previous illustrative image, the price depends on the maximal possible profit. If the demand is increases, then the price of the item will also increase. The price will fine-tune itself on the market. If the price overshoots, then the profit will start to fall, and then the price throttles back. This is currently not the case, the sellers are selling the soap at that shop for $20 because they can sell it for $20. The supply, the demand, the profit, is all depending on the free market.
Its not just food, its not just pandemics
Lets see examples from the american computer industry. The price of american 6 core cpus were walking from $2 to $200 up and down in the last 2 years. There are multiple type of 6 core cpus, including old models from Phenom2, old decommissioned Opteron server rigs, multiple i7 models, and the newest amd Ryzen. When there is a lot of server rig being decommisioned, then you can buy them for $2 each. When people selling their older 6 core Phenom2, then they can sell it for only $15-20. If there is currently no new CPU-s from such are being dumped on the market, you have to pay $150-200 to buy one, or buy a new one for $300.
6 core processors are not a health related products
The market decides. What if you need it for efficient work to upgrade your old 2 core CPU? If you cant work, you die from starvation. Even if you are speculating on that CPU, why would be immoral to buy it for $2 and sell it for $200 later? You take the risk when buying it... Because, what if it just becames $0 and you lose your investment? The same applies on the soap, and your hand sanitizer. If you cant sell it, then it gets damaged due to the time, and you must throw it out. Lets see, there will be no electricity because the maintainers of the electric network gets infected by the corona virus. And then someone starts selling $100 UPS with solar charger for $4000 in shops. Will be that also immoral?
Capitalism and speculation is the only healthy and natural state of our species.
In communism (Hungary) in the early 50s, they sentenced meat speculators to relocation and 10 years of forced labour... By 1952 there were no meat available on the market any more. Praise the moment: the capitalism made it possible to still be able to buy soap. Otherwise, in a state regulated market, there would be no hand soap any more. People would beat each other to death for soap on the streets.
The seller can and will sell the soap for $20 because there is demand at that price.
Killing one is murderer. Killing millions of people is fine?
Thats why capitalism won. Now you dont have to kill anyone, you just have to pay a little extra for that soap. The heroes are selling $20 soap instead of killing each other for the soap. This is the only natural and good way for both the sellers and the buyers. In the case of extra regulation by government corresponding to this situation, there will be not enough soap available any more on the market.
Picture taken by Prepper Veteran UK https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCqLrA6gUAo1MtoVDB_BU2A
