I watched a very good video of an airline pilot analyzing the premliminary report. That 200 hour pilot did exactly the right thing. The problem was, he did it too late. By the time they implemented the correct procedure, the plane was at full throttle and moving around 500 mph, and the force on the horizontal stabilizer was so great that the manual trim controls could not be moved.
I'm confident a pilot facing the terror of his imminent death would have exerted every ounce of his strength to move those stabilizer trim wheel, but at the speed the plane was moving, and with the degree of up angle on the stabilizer, it was virtually impossible to move those trim wheels without dropping the nose, and they were simply too low to the ground to allow that.
They should have cut off the automatic stabilizer trim as soon as it started giving them troubles. They waited too long.
“but at the speed the plane was moving, and with the degree of up angle on the stabilizer”
Up angle? The MCAS moves the trim to a down stabilizer.
Indeed. “Loss of situational awareness” is a real dangerous thing.