After she admitted breaking the coronavirus lockdown rules twice, the Chief Medical Officer’s position became impossible.

The stay at home rules are having a serious and indelible impact on people’s lives.

There are elderly people dying without family to comfort them in their final moments.

READ MORE: Catherine Calderwood: The obstetrics expert who held Scotland’s top medical job

There are friends unable to attend funerals of people they have loved all their lives.

These are moments in time that cannot be returned to when this crisis is finally over. They are lost, never to be recovered and in many cases will leave a lasting impact on those to who they were denied.

The rules are, the majority of the country understands, necessary to stop the spread of the coronavirus which is claiming more lives every day.

Dr Catherine Calderwood can revisit her home by the sea with her family anytime she likes when this crisis is over.

A daughter cannot revisit the bedside of a dying father. A lifelong friend cannot return to the funeral of someone he shared decades with.

So, to see the Chief Medical Officer blatantly disregarding the very advice she tells the country they must obey for something so trivial is disappointing, astonishing and hypocritical.

Dr Calderwood's job has been one of high responsibility and she has been undoubtedly under extreme pressure.

So too are many others in the population.

Thousands have lost their job and fear for their future.

Homeless shelters have been closed and people put up in hotels, a temporary luxury that will be withdrawn when the crisis is over.

There are people for who having to stay indoors is putting their physical and mental health at risk.

Women at risk of domestic violence, children at risk of abuse are all put in greater danger due to these measures.

Police, social services and support groups are doubling their efforts to ensure that help is available and are trying desperately to reduce those risks.

In following the rules these people have no escape. The thought of a stroll around an idyllic village with loving family is an experience they can never envisage.

So, to break the lockdown measures she helped to put in place just to visit a second home she does not need is not only insensitive but shows a blindness to the everyday struggles of many people also under serious pressure.

READ MORE: Coronavirus: CMO Dr Catherine Calderwood resigns

Before going out we are encouraged to think if it is absolutely necessary.

Only once a day for work, essential shopping, a medical appointment or for exercise. It is Dr Calderwood's voice I hear when I think of those words.

So, presumably Dr Calderwood and her family must have asked themselves, and each other, if they should be going to the house in Fife.

If they did then they must have concluded, yes, we should.

It smacks not only of entitlement but suggests a blatant ignorance of what others are going through.

Last week I wrote a column criticising Prince Charles for ignoring the rules of visiting a second home.

I was not surprised that he thinks he is an exception to the rules but was that Dr Calderwood should think the same.

I, like many others, had watched every daily briefing she had been part of with Nicola Sturgeon and Jeane Freeman and was encouraged that we had three competent women in charge of this national effort.

I felt they were providing comfort that they were in control of what could be controlled and had confidence that we could come through this.

Sadly, I will not be alone in feeling that confidence has been undermined.

Dr Calderwood has made the job of the First Minister even more difficult than it already was.

In dealing with a crisis like this unity is imperative. We are all in this together.

Nicola Sturgeon said she needed the advice and expertise of Dr Calderwood to be able to do her job, and didn't think resignation was in the best interests of the country.

Now Dr Calderwood has resigned, Ms Sturgeon, will need to seek that advice elsewhere

I’m not sure many others would have taken Dr Calderwood as the Chief Medical Officer seriously again.

This article originally appeared in The Evening Times politics seciton.