Reply to Comment on "Describing water treatment process performance: Why average log-reduction can be a misleading statistic" by Schmidt, P.J., Anderson, W.B., and Emelko, M.B. [Water Research 176 (2020), 115702].

•The conclusions of Schmidt et al. (2020) are justified.•Microorganism elimination credits (MECs) are often calculated inappropriately.•These MECs have compromised conclusions in a QMRA guidance example.•A new illustrative example further demonstrates the soundness of our assertions.