1) After the system is revised to require two AOA sensors, verification of the function and calibration of both sensors (I.e., not mismatched) still needs to be a no-go item for this aircraft type in my opinion, to achieve the level of safety and “airworthiness” to which we are accustomed.
Some will say this will not be necessary because the MCAS system will not operate if the two sensors disagree. But the MCAS system was added for a reason — to avoid a stall — and we achieve safety in aviation through LAYERS of safety. I had a wise — if fidgety and hyper — engineer / aviation nut repeatedly tell me “accidents don’t usually happen because of a single failure, they happen because of a series of failures.” (Thank you, Mr. Bernie R. and others...) Where the hell was the responsible oversight? No FAA person who trained or mentored me would have accepted this single-point-of-failure as-is, especially after the first crash.

2) This is not a case of “the pilot screwed up and the aircraft failed to recover”. This is a case of “the aircraft screwed up and the pilot failed to recover”. An aircraft system suddenly, and without warning, starts to pitch - to tilt earthward - inappropriately, and pilot inaction for forty seconds would doom the flight? That’s what is especially egregious. If your car had a system to substitute acceleration for braking if you were about to be hit from behind, or to make sudden right turns to avoid pedestrians, and it tended to get activated (maybe because of sun glare or a dirty lens for example), would it be okay to say, all you have to do is push a button on the dash to deactivate it? Oops.

And one more observation.
3) Dear damn brilliant colleagues as well as my old former self. Why didn’t any of us stop this from happening? Questions during aircraft selection processes might have prompted a change. Due diligence. This is primarily Boeing, primarily the FAA..but as another old boss used to say, “when someone else drops the ball, we have to pick it up”. In addition to those with very direct responsibility, there are probably a thousand people throughout the industry who could have noticed this issue and raised a ruckus. As my old boss said, “if you see something wrong, challenge it.”

I am just sick about it.

we have "kids" that are just past their 19th B-day getting qualified as "Plane Captain" on the Flight Deck of an Aircraft Carrier.

This 18-19 year old can shut the entire jet down if something is not right. No questions, just shut the flight schedule down until we figure out WTF is going on. Sometimes, it's nothing. Other times, it's "where is that fucking flashlight I had in my toolkit"?.

Bottom line is that this "kid" can overturn (at least temporarily) the most senior officer on the ship, no reprisal, no bullshit.

Isn't there something similar in commercial air?

Upstream at a design stage, it would be fine to blow the whistle, point out problems. There are many who would care and take it seriously. This is more of a problem about group think, I suspect.

I have a very faint memory of a comment from someone in a hallway that is weighing on me. My memory is failing me, though.

I will say that if you have six major carriers instead of three, you’d have almost twice as many chances of the issue being raised and spotlighted by some alert engineering, flight ops, or fleet group.