Zika is here, and America has no plan to fight it

The best way to educate the public is also a matter of debate. "Always, the most effective way is going to depend on the behaviors you're trying to change," Krenn says. Any national campaign must also gauge who the audience is, how they receive information, and what they consider to be a credible source. Only then can it begin to focus on what that messaging will look like. But experts disagree on each of those prerequisites.

Krenn says awareness of the general public is important, but adds that some populations need the message more than others, especially when funds are limited. "The focus should be on women who are at risk of becoming pregnant or who are pregnant," she says, given the risk of birth defects for unborn babies of infected mothers. "That's where I would invest my money if the money was short."

Just say no

Because mosquitoes carry more diseases than just Zika, Markowski calls for a large-scale, national effort, referring to the "Just Say No" campaign against drugs in the 1980s as a good example. "It would have to be pretty big," he says. "You have to shock people into reacting."

Conlon wants to see a federally funded national campaign that stigmatizes standing water, pointing to similar efforts that have made other behaviors socially unacceptable.

For disseminating information, Krenn says television and social media could be the most effective in the U.S., even though in developing countries radio spots and house-to-house visits are more impactful. But Markowski disagrees. In his experience, he says, the most effective tool is getting out in the public and talking to people, whether it's by setting up a table at someone else's fair or creating a Mosquito Awareness Day. "Talk to people one on one and explain what they need to do," he says. "To me, that's more effective than Facebook posts."

For now, the CDC is doing what it can to spread the message, including providing audience-specific Zika Communication Toolkits and launching a comprehensive campaign in Puerto Rico targeting pregnant women. But without more money, don't expect to see a national Zika prevention commercial on television or Mosquito Awareness Day soon.

The dengue lesson

Even in an ideal world, with endless Zika funding and the time and resources to persuade every single American to spill out every last container of standing water, the A. aegypti would most likely still find a way to breed.

Dana Focks is one of the leading global experts on the bug and has led efforts in a number of cities to eradicate dengue by controlling the mosquito population. After a major initiative in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, to destroy the city's most productive containers, the mosquitoes continued to flourish. He presented his findings in December 2011 at a symposium hosted by the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene in a session he led entitled, "A nail in the coffin: Time for new approaches to dengue vector control."

"There was cryptic breeding," he says, "underground breeding that we could never find." Despite the World Health Organization's support for his project and plenty of funding, the approach simply didn't work. The "WHO has been running around saying clean up the containers, and it's never produced dengue control anywhere in the world."

"What we need is a vaccine," he says. Scientists are certainly trying, but that requires funding, too.

Related:

Florida shudders as Zika spread forces Miami shops to close

Poison pills for babies

Have you followed us on Facebook?