^ it would appear the evidence we have points to that you are right, and the crucial action that did not take place was switching the throttles to manual to lower the speed and have less pressure on the elevator controls.
When the Aoa vane or some data transfer on one side was indeed damaged why did the MCAS system take this input for real, when there was the second one working?
The vane or some part of the one Aoa sensor on one side is damaged, the control system gets strange readings and sops, handing control to the pilots - autopilot off - ok.
In the second the autopilot is off, the MCAS system counts to 5 seconds and then 'adjusts' the pitch down because of the one wrong one Aoa reading, but what is with the second one?
I still wonder why (and if?) they really engaged the auto trim again when they had regained level flight, if being too fast. Or if it can have been a system fault(?) There also seem to be a lot of Aoa indicators failing recently
