I did have that in mind, Roger. That is why I asked about a method to test this
statistically.
It is true that these are seismically active regions (except for the mid-Atlantic
ridge zone, where Mb>5 earthquakes are not common). But there are many
Other seismically active areas of the earth as well where seismicity was
not very active in this period - e.g. The Aleutians, Alaska, the entire coast of
South America, Indonesia, etc.
To test this, I did a quick check from the global catalog. I looked at the number
of events in these 7 areas of Mb>=5.5 and found 5261 events. The total number
of events in the global catalog of Mb>=5.5 is 37905. This means that at this level
13.8% of the global catalog is from these 7 regions, 86.2 % from other areas.
I am presuming that approximately the same percentages would apply to events
of Mb>=4.5. If this presumption is correct (I did not check it since this would
involve several million events), then comparing 64% of the catalog over the past
10 days in these 7 regions over a background rate of 13.8% of the catalog in these
7 regions suggests this was an anomalous period of activity in these regions
compared with the rest of the global catalog.