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The manual electric trim inputs override the MCAS inputs[0], so they could have kept applying the appropriate trim regardless of the MCAS malfunction.

[0] Appendix 1, 05:40:30 (You can see the AND command being canceled by the pilots manual electric ANU command)

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It only overrides the MCAS inputs when they're actively adjusting the trim. So, they did try and correct the trim with the manual inputs, and five seconds after the last push of a trim adjust button the malfunctioning MCAS activated and adjusted the trim to something far worse than when they'd started. If I'm reading this right, the plane hit the ground killing everyone on board less than 30 seconds later.

Refer to the graph on Appendix 1, the automatic AND commands begin about 5 minutes before the crash. They counter them partially with the manual ANU electric trim for the first 1.5 minutes before issuing STAB CUTOUT.

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