Remember when inflation was the villain everyone was mad at? Well, it turns out inflation was just taking a strategic timeout — the kind athletes take when they need to psych out their opponent before the final round. And we just handed it the perfect excuse to sit on the bench for a few months.

The latest inflation numbers came in at 2.8%, which is genuinely good news if you enjoy pretending that temporary victories are permanent ones. The culprit behind this brief respite? The government’s energy bill support package, which basically amounted to throwing money at the problem while whispering, “Please just stay down for a little while.” It worked! For now. Energy prices dropped. Wholesale prices dropped. Even the Iran war — yes, that thing — managed to accidentally help by keeping oil prices from spiking as hard as they could have.

So naturally, everyone is treating this like the war is over. Mission accomplished. Inflation defeated. Time to celebrate with a nice dinner that will cost more next month than it did this month.

Here is the thing nobody wants to say out loud at the victory party: this is not a win. This is a commercial break in the middle of a horror movie. Inflation did not disappear. It just got really good at hide-and-seek, and the government’s energy bill support package is essentially a blindfold that we voluntarily put on.

The mechanism is almost comical when you think about it. The government throws money at energy costs. Energy prices fall because, well, when you subsidize something, it gets cheaper. Shockingly, this works in the short term. But here is what happens next — and economists are already whispering about this in the corners of conferences where they think nobody is listening: all that government money has to come from somewhere. Either it gets borrowed (which means future interest payments), or it comes from taxes (which means less money in your pocket for other things), or it just gets printed (which is basically inflation’s opening act).

Meanwhile, the underlying pressures that made inflation a problem in the first place are still hanging around like an unwanted houseguest. Labor markets are still tight. Supply chains are still weird. People still want things. Businesses still need to pay workers. The government is still spending money like it grows on trees — spoiler alert: it does not, but the printing press is a close second.

What makes this whole situation genuinely amusing is the timing. We get one month of good inflation numbers — one! — and suddenly everyone is talking about rate cuts and easy money returning. The Federal Reserve is supposed to feel emboldened to stop raising rates and maybe even start lowering them. Which is great if you are borrowing money, but terrible if you are trying to actually defeat inflation, because the second the Fed pivots to “easy” mode, inflation’s timeout is over. It stretches, shakes out its legs, and comes back swinging.

The energy bill support package is not a bad thing in isolation. People need to heat their homes and drive their cars, and energy costs matter. But treating a temporary price relief as a permanent victory is like taking a painkiller and concluding that your broken leg has healed. You feel better for a while, and then you try to walk and remember that nothing actually changed.

The real kicker? This package probably only works once. You cannot keep subsidizing energy indefinitely without eventually running out of money or voters who are willing to pay for it. So what happens when the support expires? Energy prices normalize. Inflation creeps back up. And everyone acts shocked — shocked! — that the problem returned, despite every economist who was not at a victory party saying this would happen.

Inflation is not defeated. It is just on a scheduled break, and someone handed it a snack and a comfortable chair. When it comes back, it will probably be stronger, because now the government has set a precedent that it will throw money at price problems instead of actually solving them. Which means the next time inflation shows up, people will expect another bailout, which will cost more money, which will create more inflation pressure, which will require another bailout.

It is a beautiful cycle, really. The kind of beautiful that makes economists weep into their spreadsheets.

So yes, enjoy the 2.8% inflation number. Take the win. Celebrate the temporary relief. But do not mistake a commercial break for the end of the movie. Inflation is not gone. It is just backstage, doing stretches, waiting for its cue to come back on stage for the sequel nobody asked for.