Maybe gold and inflation are no longer as correlated as they used to be.
Or maybe they were never correlated and people just assumed they did and never bothered looking at the data:
* https://www.nber.org/papers/w18706
* https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3667789
I.e. if gold looks flat growth wise to the dollar, maybe it's cause it actually went up in value but the dollar went down due to inflation.
Maybe gold and inflation are no longer as correlated as they used to be.