The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) refused to recommend jabs for healthy 12 to 15-year-olds last week.
After assessing all of the international evidence the expert advisory panel concluded the tiny risk of inoculation was greater than the even smaller risk from Covid-19 for this age group.
The guidance was however based purely on an assessment of the health implications for the children themselves.
Government ministers appears keen to press on with jabs in the hope of bringing soaring infections in the wider community under control.
If you are a parent and don’t know what to think, then join the club.
Some of the best minds in the scientific and medical community are also split down the middle.
Allan Wilson, President of the Institute of Biomedical Science (IBMS), has warned against political interference and advised following the JCVI guidance.
But the JCVI themselves have left open the possibility that other government health officials may want to consider the wider societal impact.
Jillian Evans, NHS Grampian’s Head of Intelligence is in favour widening the vaccination programme to protect youngsters from the small risk of Long Covid, and in the hope it will help protect everybody in society.
Infections are out of control, and while that is not currently translating into high numbers of deaths, people are still dying and the numbers could increase.
It is an ethical and medical maze with too many unknowns ever to be sure of the correct answer.
But something everyone can agree on is that another lockdown would be bad for us all.
Anne's law vow has to be kept
Mary Fowler lived an extraordinary life of almost 105 years.
After growing up in Scotland she relocated to the south of England as German bombs dropped on London.
She worked as a fruit picker, in a factory, and as a home help delivering food parcels from her bike to the housebound elderly she referred to as her patients.
After returning to Glenrothes to retire in her sixties she went on to live another four decades surrounded by a loving family.
It is a tragedy that much of her last two years were spent in lockdown isolation at a care home.
In a heartbreaking video plea before her death she implored the government to find a solution to the “pure punishment”.
Everyone is now agreed - including First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Health Secretary Humza Yousaf - that the solution is Anne’s Law.
They now need to honour their promise to deliver it.
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