Urban housing & consumer foods like flour and sugar didn’t rise.
The average price for a new car in the US was only up 2.5% from Sep ‘19 to Sep ‘20, despite many factories closing for months.
Most importantly, wages didn’t increase.
There is no inflation in the traditional sense.
There was a shift away from urban areas.
Forget about new car MSRPs, and compare actual prices paid for the same cars 9/19 vs 9/20.
Wages did not increase, but the amount of capital being spent by the lowest 80% of income classes did increase.
Yes, many price fluctuations can be attributed to other factors besides covid. The point is that at a certain point, when extenuating circumstances and factors apply to almost any given commodities price elasticity, inflation becomes impossible to diagnose. One would have to look at the big picture and big data to get a quasi accurate portrayal, because any individual manifestation will be attributed to comorbidities.
The weakened dollar relative to other currencies that did not provide anywhere near this level of trickle up economical quantitative easing is pretty telling, though.