Note that your example of a famine brings up 'shortage' before any mention of prices. There are multiple ideas of shortage at play. At the most basic level shor

Note that your example of a famine brings up 'shortage' before any mention of prices. There are multiple ideas of shortage at play. At the most basic level shortage can mean that there is not enough of a good/service for everyone to have it at any price (food in a famine, medicine in a pandemic). Typically we apply shortage to situations where the supply and demand curves reach some hard stop at the edges (elasticity goes to 0). In the case of normal market dynamics where supply and demand are both reasonably elastic then there really are no shortages per say - just cheapskates.