If this season turns out to be Connor Beaupre’s last as the Wild’s emergency backup goaltender, that’s OK, he said Tuesday. It’s been a good run for the lifelong Minnesotan and son of former North Stars goaltender Don Beaupre.

This season will be his 10th as the Wild’s emergency backup goalie, or EBUG as insiders call it, and, well, “Ten years is a long time to do it.”

But it’s been a great 10 years for Beaupre, who played for Edina, the University of Denver and Minnesota before hooking up with the Wild to fill a role whose importance doesn’t match its public profile.

“You think your career’s over, then suddenly you get a new life, a chance to compete and be part of a team again,” he said. “It’s one of those things that’s kind of unbelievable. So, every time I show up, I soak it up. Summer is the best part of it, every day with these guys, working. Being part of that is super cool.”

Even though EBUGS rarely get into warmups for an NHL game — let alone actually play in one — they play a major role behind the scenes for all 32 NHL teams, sometimes taking a net in practice, sometimes working with rehabbing players and often working with the guys who live in Minnesota year-round.

EBUGS are so important, in fact, that the NHL and Players Association have agreed to make emergency backup goaltenders a permanent position, allowing teams to keep a third, traveling goaltender starting in 2026-27, when the season expands from 82 to 84 games.

When Beaupre first heard the news, he said, “I was pretty sure this was going to be the end.”

But after looking deeper, Beaupre found he fits the profile laid out in the memorandum of understanding for the new labor deal: no more than 80 games of professional experience and out of pro hockey for at least three seasons. EBUGs also can’t have ever played an NHL game on a non-tryout contract.

Further, teams appear likely to look for goalies that can fill other roles, as well. Beaupre’s fulltime gig is videography, working primarily with Twin Cities athletes and teams, and he’s been the goaltending coach at Holy Angels for the past eight years.

“It kinda looks like they’re looking for guys like me,” he said.

If not, Beaupre said he already has asked general manager Bill Guerin if he’ll have a celebrated farewell like the one Marc-Andre Fleury had before the slam-dunk hall of famer retired at the end of last season.

“He just laughed. He always gives a little bit of a hard time,” Beaupre said. “Those relationships are so great, whether it’s Billy or the guys on the equipment staff, the players. No one is ever like, ‘Oh, he wasn’t good enough to really play.’ No, they have always been super accepting.”

At the least, Beaupre will have one more chance to possibly get into an NHL game, for the Wild or the visiting team, which both rely on the home team’s EBUG under the current set up. But even with two possible openings on any night, it’s extremely rare for the emergency backup to play.

It has never happened for Beaupre, and in fact has happened only six times over the past 10 years — in more than 13,000 games, according to the Associated Press. David Ayers, a junior hockey coach and Zamboni driver from Ontario, was the last to actually win an NHL game, when he entered a game for Carolina stopped 8 of 10 shots to beat the hometown Maple Leafs in 2020.

The last time Beaupre was even in line to play in a pinch was in a recent game against Tampa Bay at Xcel Energy Center, and after each team was without a goaltender by the third period, he didn’t know which team it might be.

“The double-edged sword is you hope that someone doesn’t get hurt so you can play,” he said. “Confidence-wise, at this point, I’d love to get in (a game). I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m coming in from the press box; there’s no real pressure to perform.

“People have asked me, ‘If you have to play for the visiting team, would you feel bad competing against the Wild?’ And I say, ‘Hell, no! I practice against those guys all the time; I’d love to beat them.’ I’d love to get one chance to be a big part of it.”

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was appointed secretary of health and human services, everyone knew he was capable of doing great damage. He had a long history of indulging conspiracy theories, particularly when it came to vaccines.

Already, his attempt to reassess immunization schedules in the U.S. has outraged pediatricians. But his latest broadside against science, a decision to withdraw U.S. funding from the global vaccine alliance GAVI, may kill far more children than anything he has so far tried at home.

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, designed in cooperation between the U.S. and U.K. governments, as well as philanthropic organizations — particularly Bill and Melinda Gates’ foundation — was set up in 2000. Its mandate has been to increase access to vaccines for children whose families cannot afford them, primarily in the Global South. GAVI could have done more, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, but even so it is fair to describe it as one of the few great success stories for international collaboration in the past few decades.

It’s worth taking a moment to examine exactly how effective it has been at saving lives through its sustained focus on routine childhood vaccinations. One study published in the British Medical Journal calculated that its support for immunization programs across the world had reduced infant mortality rates by over 9% and under-fives by 12%.

During the pandemic, GAVI helped set up and administer the COVAX system for vaccine distribution to poorer countries. This took a while to get started, but eventually delivered two billion doses of various COVID-19 shots, saving hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of lives.

Initially, the Global South saw the developed world hog far more doses than they needed — Canada, a country of 40 million, had reserved 154 million doses by December of 2020 — while most other countries had simply no way to access any shots at all. GAVI, through COVAX, played a central role in addressing this shocking disparity.

Kennedy’s decision to end support to one of America’s few remaining positive interventions in the Global South is both immoral and dangerous. It will cause resentment about inequities in worldwide healthcare access to spread and further damage U.S. standing abroad when compared to countries like China. Kennedy’s deference to conspiracy theories and nativism will cost children their lives. It may even wind up being worse than the decision to stop funding USAID programs, which has already led to chaos in some of the poorest parts of the world. (A study published in The Lancet predicted those cuts could result in more than 14 million extra deaths globally by 2030.)

But it will hurt the U.S. as well. Not just because Americans cannot insulate themselves completely from an unhealthy world — the pandemic taught us that. But also because GAVI was designed around the principles of the market, and respect for intellectual property rights, institutions that serve U.S. companies and consumers most of all.

Critics argue that it is far too respectful of property rights and the profit motive. The charity Médecins Sans Frontières, for example, has complained that GAVI pays too much to the rights-holders and developers of vaccines, instead of to generics manufacturers, and that means that it costs more to immunize each child than it needs to. (Still, MSF acknowledges that half of the vaccinations it delivers every year are bought with GAVI money, and responded to Kennedy’s withdrawal of funding by saying that now, “countless children will die from vaccine-preventable diseases.”)

The fact is that if GAVI goes, then so will many countries’ incentives to respect intellectual property rights in the healthcare sector. The last thing that U.S. companies — not just in pharmaceuticals, but across the board — need is for the future centers of economic growth in the Global South to take a pick-and-choose approach to paying rights holders.

And all of us will be hurt if new and innovative medicines aren’t developed because the global norms around rights and payments change. If Kennedy is allowed to follow his anti-science instincts then the U.S. will be left unhealthier, less respected and poorer — and a million children in the rest of the world will never live to see adulthood.

Mihir Sharma is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, he is author of “Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy.”

A landmark breakthrough in HIV prevention — a scientific feat decades in the making — received final approval from the Food and Drug Administration last month. Gilead Sciences’ lenacapavir is so effective that global health leaders had started to cautiously talk about the end of an epidemic that continues to kill more than 600,000 people each year.

We should be celebrating its arrival.

Instead, aid groups and the countries most affected by HIV are reeling from the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on the global health infrastructure. Instead of perfecting plans for a rollout of the medication, they are scrambling to ensure people with HIV have the drugs they need to survive.

Last year, I wrote about the stunning — or as one HIV expert described it, “spine-chilling”— results from a large study of lenacapavir. None of the women and adolescents who were given the twice-yearly injection in the trial became infected with HIV. In a second study involving men who have sex with men, and transgender individuals who have sex with men, the treatment was 96% effective. Even better, Gilead is working on a newer version that could potentially offer protection for a year or more.

That’s about as close to an HIV vaccine we’re likely to get — at least for many years. It’s also the world’s best shot of achieving the goal of ending HIV by 2030.

For low- and middle-income countries that continue to face frustratingly stubborn infection rates, a twice-yearly drug could be a game-changer. Although existing treatments of daily pills do an excellent job at preventing infection, getting people to use them consistently has been difficult.

There is the stigma attached to the pills. Ensuring patients return for frequent testing and refills is also challenging — as is simply remembering to take them daily. Consider the typical day of a mom with a newborn and it’s easy to understand how six months of protection could make a real difference in lowering HIV cases in women and infants.

Some experts have even suggested lenacapavir is our best chance of wiping out new infections in children.

That was before the Trump administration abruptly shut down USAID, the lead agency behind Pepfar. The global initiative to combat HIV/AIDS is credited with saving an estimated 26 million lives since its inception in 2003. Although the administration granted a limited waiver to allow some HIV services to continue, funding is significantly restrained.

As health workers grapple with fewer resources, their focus has shifted to people living with HIV. “When the chips are down, you safeguard treatment because those people will die if they don’t get their antiretroviral,” says Linda-Gail Bekker, director of the Desmund Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town. And yet, she said, “prevention we know is an absolute cornerstone to bringing this epidemic under control.”

Because the situation is so dynamic, it’s been difficult to capture what’s happening on the ground. The best current model suggests the administration’s actions could result in at least 70,000 additional new infections, and another 5,000 deaths in the next five years.

UCLA infectious disease epidemiologist Dvora Joseph Davey says that in 2024, the eight public health clinics in Cape Town — where she is based — saw three infants who were HIV-positive at birth. In the first five months of this year, they’ve already seen three babies born with the infection.

She knows there will be more. One pregnant woman with HIV recently came into the clinic and, at 37 weeks, her viral load was dauntingly high. She’d skipped picking up her last three-month supply of pills. The nurse she’d been seeing was let go as part of the funding cuts, and no one was available to do a blood draw at her last visit, Davey says.

If the people who, in theory, should still be benefiting from global aid are falling through the cracks, what hope do we have for prevention?

Prevention efforts have already been severely disrupted in some countries. Supply is responsible for some of the upheaval, but the more complicated problem is getting the drugs to the people who need them most. “We need low-cost product and also a low-cost delivery mode,” says Carmen Pérez Casas, senior strategy lead at Unitaid, a global health initiative hosted by the World Health Organization. The situation for the latter “has changed radically,” she says.

HIV prevention is not as simple as just handing out a prescription. It’s first identifying those most at risk of infection, getting them tested to confirm they are negative, and offering counseling about their options. It’s ensuring they return for more testing and the next dose of their medication. That requires a vast support network ranging from doctors and nurses to counselors, pharmacists, lab technicians, data scientists and more.

Pepfar supported all of that infrastructure. In South Africa, for example, cuts have resulted in lost jobs for some 8,000 health workers focused on HIV.

Aid groups are doing their best to ensure the breakthrough’s promise is not entirely lost. Their first hurdle is bridging the gap to the arrival of low-cost generic lenacapavir, which isn’t expected until sometime in 2027. (Gilead is allowing a handful of drug companies to make and sell generic forms of lenacapavir in the countries most heavily impacted by HIV.) Global health agencies are anxiously awaiting the company’s price tag for those countries to understand how far their funding can be stretched.

Then they need to get the drug to patients. Experts tell me they’ve scaled back their expectations given the upheaval with Pepfar. The Trump administration’s termination of National Institutes of Health grants to foreign countries has created additional hurdles. It’s been particularly devastating in South Africa, where the NIH supported a significant chunk of research related to HIV. That means less money to conduct so-called implementation studies for lenacapavir, which are crucial for understanding how to improve the drug’s use in the real world. One simple thing the Trump administration could do is free up funding for prevention. Pepfar continues to operate under a waiver that only allows PrEP money to be spent for those who are pregnant or breastfeeding.

Groundbreaking science alone won’t end HIV. It must be paired with affordability and access. The Trump administration’s callous cuts to global health efforts put all of those things at risk — including the promising future where HIV is brought to heel.

Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering biotech, health care and the pharmaceutical industry. Previously, she was executive editor of Chemical & Engineering News.

WASHINGTON — It was a Jack Nicholson-Tom Cruise moment. President Donald Trump couldn’t handle the truth. He didn’t even know the truth. And he has no respect for truth, so even if he knew, why would he tell the truth about the truth?

At a White House lunch with African leaders on Wednesday, Trump engaged in a bizarre exchange with the New York Times White House reporter Shawn McCreesh.

The day before, when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked the president who authorized the pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine — at a time when Russia is engaged in a barbarous onslaught, indiscriminately killing civilians — Trump replied, defensively: “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

The Pentagon’s puer aeternus, Pete Hegseth, was sitting right beside Trump. And reporters soon ferreted out the information that perennial screw-up Hegseth had ordered the pause without telling Trump, Marco Rubio and other top officials.

Trump reversed the Pentagon chief, reflecting a belated awareness of the fact that Vladimir Putin is playing him for a fool. Like a spurned lover, he keened that his Russian boyfriend’s promises are “meaningless.”

In a follow-up the next day, McCreesh asked Trump if he had figured out who had ordered the munitions to Ukraine halted.

When Trump said no, McCreesh pressed him: “What does it say that such a big decision could be made inside your government without your knowing?”

Trump bristled. A jester like Hegseth had kept the king in the dark on a consequential move.

“If a decision was made, I will know,” Trump blustered. “I’ll be the first to know. In fact, most likely I’d give the order, but I haven’t done that yet.”

It is not reassuring, at a time of man-made and natural disasters, that the president is spouting gobbledygook and his maladroit Cabinet members are spinning out.

It’s a paradox: If you choose your Cabinet based on looks, you are likely to end up with a Cabinet that makes you look bad. Running government is harder than bloviating on Fox News and assorted podcasts.

And if you demand über-fealty from your advisers, you will end up surrounded by toadies who don’t level with you.

In the dishy new book “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf describe how Sergio Gor, a Trump aide who rose by publishing Trump’s coffee table books, created draconian loyalty tests during the transition.

“Trump believed the biggest mistake of his first term was picking disloyal officials, and Gor was determined to disqualify candidates who had ever criticized Trump or anyone associated with him,” the authors write.

Kristi Noem is loyal to Trump. But perhaps it was too much to ask that someone who executed her own puppy was going to understand the humanitarian necessity of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Noem has been parroting Trump and talking about abolishing FEMA since she got the job heading the Department of Homeland Security. She recently enacted a debilitating rule designed to cut the FEMA budget, dictating that every grant and contract over $100,000 needs explicit permission from her.

As CNN pointed out, that’s “pennies” in an agency where disaster costs soar into the billions. At the same time, The Times reports, the agency didn’t answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster line because it had fired hundreds of call center contractors. (Now, confronted with the Texas disaster, the administration is backing off the eradication plan.)

As Trump was preparing to travel to Kerr County, Texas, to inspect flood damage on Friday, the White House posted a meme of him as Superman, playing off the new movie about the Man of Steel. But the initial federal response was less than super. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, CNN reported, and there have been questions about crucial staffing shortages at the National Weather Service as floodwaters rose.

Pam Bondi enraged the Trump faithful when, after she inflamed conspiracy theorists about Jeffrey Epstein documents, her DOJ said Monday there was nothing more to see. No client list. Move along, please. “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep?” an irritated Trump asked reporters about his erstwhile pedophile playmate.

Laura Loomer demanded that Bondi resign, writing on X: “I cannot sugar coat how much good will Pam Blondi has cost the Trump admin with the base this week. She is a massive liability to President Trump.”

On Wednesday, Bondi angrily accused Dan Bongino, conspiracist podcaster turned FBI deputy director, of leaking stories that whipped up expectations for Epstein secrets. He denied it, and told people he was considering quitting.

Now furious right-wing conspiracists think there’s a cover-up of the cover-up.

Vapidly, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins suggested people on Medicaid could replace deported immigrants. They can pick our crops! It’s unreal, but Sean Duffy, once a “Real World” cast member, is in charge of transportation and NASA. And don’t forget the scary spike in measles cases fueled by the anti-vaccine crowd; thank you, RFK Jr.!

It turns out, even good-looking dodos are still dodos.

Maureen Dowd writes a column for the New York Times.