There's no date on that Boeing statement. Was it issued before or after the Ethiopian crash?
In 2017, within several months after beginning 737 MAX deliveries, engineers at Boeing identified that the 737 MAX display system software did not correctly meet the AOA Disagree alert requirements
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I believe they started delivering the MAX in May 2017?
Accordingly, the review concluded, the existing functionality was acceptable until the alert and the indicator could be delinked in the next planned display system software update.
How long does that process take? By October 2018, nothing had happened. Boeing have been vague about exactly when the discrepancy was noticed, so let's say they had seventeen months to get the software fix designed and installed. Is seventeen months the standard kind of time it takes for aviation software fixes to get implemented? (And there's not much evidence the fix was even under design, prior to Lion Air.)
Everything I've read suggests a major schism between the engineering layers at Boeing and the commercial execs, with all the power in the hands of the execs. So I'm not surprised to read:
Senior company leadership was not involved in the review and first became aware of this issue in the aftermath of the Lion Air accident.