This doesn't surprise me. I assume that as soon as it became clear that the Lion's Air crash was caused by a failure to deactivate the MCAS system, every 737 MAX pilot in the world immediately got out their manual and learned how to do it. And every airline that flies the plane immediately set up a training program.
So when the Ethiopian Airlines pilots started having problems, we can be pretty sure they did what the manual called for. And that it didn't work.