Indeed. But I get why people are confused because it is a subtle difference between 'stress relieved through small earthquakes is stress expended' vs 'stress relieved through small earth quakes is not indicative of the magnitude of future events'.

The long term absence of stress relief small quakes on a known fault line might be bad news, or no news at all, statistics are where the difference is here, not in particular events. See also, 'the big one' and various theories around it.