Capitol Coverage A portrait of former Colorado Gov. Julius Caldeen Gunter hangs in the state Capitol. A historian says Gunter had a "halfhearted" response to the 1918 pandemic and did little to encourage social distancing. You have to go back more than a century to find another time Coloradans faced a statewide crisis as big and deadly as the current COVID-19 pandemic. But experts who studied the state’s response to the Spanish flu of 1918 say history is not repeating itself when it comes to how state lawmakers are responding to the latest outbreak. Today, visitors to the Capitol building must wear masks and have their temperatures taken, and lawmakers sit between plexiglass dividers.