Yes the YoY number is useful for getting rid of seasonal variations. The monthly CPI is also noisy. But when there’s a big spike over a few months (like we had 8-16 months ago) YoY won’t go down meaningfully for at least a year.

This is actually great (if noisy) news. 2 months of 0.4% CPI increase is equivalent to 5% yearly inflation. But the YoY is still high because it was much worse 8-12 months ago.

I hadn’t even considered that people will think low numbers are a lie because prices don’t go down. But of course (sadly) you’re right.