With winter starting, virus whips up winds of uncertainty By MALLIKA SEN NEW YORK - Coronavirus cases spiking nationwide. A chill, existential and literal, setting in once more. And now: a winter likely to be streaked by a soundtrack of sirens instead of silver bells. It was winter when the pandemic began, and it will be winter long before it's over. Weary and traumatized from months of death and confinement, Americans are being handed mixed messages, from governments to their own internal clocks running haywire on flattened time. Shouldn't it be over by now? After all, vaccines are here. But before the average person will get inoculated, winter will exact its toll.