LAUSR

We thank Leo Lam and Taylor Nichols for their response 1 to our paper ‘COVID- 19 vaccine boosters for young adults: a risk– benefit assessment and ethical analysis of mandate policies at universities’. 2 In our paper, we demonstrate that the risk– benefit calculus to mandate boosters for young adults aged 18–29 is a net risk intervention. The authors assert that we have made three inappropriate comparisons of benefits versus risks of the mRNA vaccine booster dose in this age group. We provide our response to each below. We erred on the side of overestimating benefits of the booster dose against severe COVID- 19 in this age group and still found net harms to outweigh net benefits. The conclusion of our paper holds, and university booster mandates for young people were—and remain—unethical.