An acquaintance who works in finance said that the USD was devalued during COVID but hasn’t yet experienced much inflation except in household goods because money is still expensive. What does that even mean? How can money be expensive? And how does that differ from being valued/devalued?

I would think “money is expensive” means something along the lines of “there isn’t much liquid cash”, but I thought the money injected into the economy was liquid cash.

Would someone more into finance/trading than me explain how this is possible? Thanks!