Yeah, the timing is not great for Boeing or the operators.
I've given up on commercial aviation - not out of fear of covid but just because it is such a colossal pain in the backside. There's no-where I really want to go that I cannot ride or drive to.
That said, if I was going to fly (eg. for business) I'd have no qualms about flying on a 737-MAX. Do you think there's a max pilot anywhere in the US that hasn't heard about the issue? That doesn't know if it is fighting you, you can disable it with two switches on the back on the center console? Granted, I'm a little concerned they may have introduced other issues with strap-on software fixes to MCAS but those changes hopefully got a lot of scrutiny over the past year.
The timing was fantastic for Boeing! Had there not been a pandemic, Boeing would have been liable to all of the airlines operating the MAX, or were scheduled to receive their MAX aircraft during the grounding for lost passenger revenue.
Boeing was looking at financial ruin based on the contractual penalties for late deliveries alone.
COVID allowed Boeing to show that the airlines did not suffer economically because of the unavailability of the MAX, and Airlines didn't have to make payments on aircraft that they would have just let sit idle.
Sort of a win-win.
If you disable it autopilot, that activated the MCAS system which the pilots were not even told existed. Your answer isn’t accurate.