OF course it was going to be a political football, booted back and forth over the top, never connecting with the real issue on the ground.

BBC Scotland has chosen to end the Scottish Government's daily coronavirus briefings.

Finally, says one camp, these daily party political broadcasts are coming to an end. Nicola Sturgeon should never have been allowed the chance to promote herself and her party in such an unchallenged, biased way using the supposedly impartial public service broadcaster.

Outrageous, says the other. How dare the supposedly impartial public service broadcaster, without so much as a by your leave, put an end to the informative and necessary information bulletins and the opportunity for the press to publicly question the First Minister live on air.

The argument entire is a compliment to Ms Sturgeon; the problem is that she's good at them. If she was inept at these briefings, if she did a daily Boris and made herself look a clown, no one would care. Because her assuredness and competence has boosted her opinion poll ratings, the public health purpose of the exercise is forgotten in place of partisan squabbling.

Divided neatly down party lines, the argument, as so often is the case with these things, forgot the heart of the issue: the viewers.

It doesn't particularly matter that ending the televising of the briefings ends a party broadcast, if that's how you want to look at it. We are in a pandemic and it has never been more vital, when information, rules and guidance shift on a routine basis, to get the message out to absolutely everyone in society.

If you want to look at it as an inappropriate party political broadcast then that's your business. Rather than end the briefings, call for a change in the way they're presented. Put the medical experts and scientists front and centre. Just don't expect them to answer political questions because that would be inappropriate. You need a politician for that.

And don't expect the medics and scientists to represent the government that is making these routinely shifting rules and guidance - you'd need a politician for that too.

But the folk determined purely to get Nicola Sturgeon off their telly, without any alternative suggestions, are forgetting the people who really benefit from the broadcasts.

There are elderly and vulnerable people who would normally get their news from a daily newspaper but who now can't take the risk of going out to the shops to buy one. Instead, they engage with the daily briefing to keep themselves up to date on what is an extraordinary and rapidly changing environment.

The BBC has said that its audience will have other methods of watching the briefing - it will stream them online. That's very helpful if you have access to the internet and are savvy enough to use it. Absolutely useless if you don't and aren't.

When you are middle class, fit, able and financially stable it's understandable that you would entirely miss, or simply misunderstand, the panic that removal of services causes.

It's not just an issue of the daily briefings.

Coronavirus has highlighted the gap between where we like to see ourselves as a society and where we actually are. Many businesses are insisting on contactless payments for goods and services and will not take cash. I watched a woman, attempting to speak discretely through her mask, explain in a coffee shop recently that she couldn't use her card as she had no cash in her current account but had money in her purse for a filter coffee, which she had been looking forward to as a treat.

The barista gave her the drink for free but it was too late to spare her the embarrassment she clearly felt. Of course contactless payment is the safest means of payment but how many of us swipe our cards and realise how good we have it.

Ditto the Covid-19 testing system, which is entirely set up for those who have access to a car. If you can't drive to a testing centre you're reliant on a postal test. These aren't always available, or available in a timely enough manner to ensure they arrive within the five day symptom window for when the test is optimal.

If you miss out on the test then the other option is to quarantine for 14 days. Those who don't own a car for financial reasons are likely to be the hardest hit by missing work due to being in self-isolation.

In Glasgow, the arm's-length council company that runs the city's sport and leisure services has opted to prioritise the opening of its big name facilities. Understandable... but people are still waiting for opening dates for vital local libraries, services that give the most to those who have the least.

There's a real sense in the daily briefing conversation that the most vulnerable have been forgotten or simply dismissed as being too small a number to count.

This decision has been pushed by those with a constitutional obsession who can't see that it does damage to the most vulnerable among the body politic during a time of unimaginable national crisis. Now, more than ever, is not the time.