What we really had was hoarding - again - as ammo remained available at it's retail price in many commercial calibers. Store shelves may have been empty, yet warehouses were shipping. Not cheap, therefore, not compatible with impulsive spenders who were demanding their money be taken. They don't line up for the typically expensive stuff. Price remained an object and a lot of shooters had lines in the sand drawn. Many online said they would not buy. What we had were a lot more new shooters in the last few years, and they didn't have their cushion to feel comfortable. They hadn't experienced a panic - ammo is a Just In Time thing. There are no warehouses sitting full ready for a catastrophe. Well, they have now learned it's the same for treated lumber, toilet paper, and Ramen noodles, too. Congress taxes inventory, businesses don't have backstock. Distributors get stuck in that role now and they aren't going to take it in the shorts from the IRS. It's a delicate balancing act.
I'm not depending on bulk surplus cartridges much anymore. My carry and hunting ammo remains at a few boxes in rotation. None of that is cheap fodder - few carry FMJ steel cased for protection and certainly not for hunting. I look forward to building another hunting AR in a cartridge that suffered so little demand I could have purchased ammo every month last year. A box goes a long way, ten rounds for sighting in annually, ten rounds for carry in my state, good to go. Next year there is usually the New! cartridge to try out, and you don't need a battle pack to get results. That leaves the commodity fodder to fire up during range visits, doing what it does, giving you 3 or even 4 rounds to shoot for every one you might carry. It's not rocket surgery.
I get why high consumption shooters have continued to move away from .22LR, that problem is getting resolved with new ownership and increased capacity at ammo makers. Yet, all we did was push the problem up the cartridge chain, not solve it. Maybe if we put more of our retirement funds in ownership of the companies we think are truly important instead of the Chinese sourced "politically correct" industries, we'd underwrite the availability we really want.