No assertion on this thread cannot get away from the simple fact that aircraft has been, and are still grounded globally. Fact. Airworthiness authorities concluded there is a fatal hazard with the "operating system" in totality of the 737MAX. Remedies to correct this fact may include aircraft modifications, crew training & documentation.
As SLF3 (post
#1110) points out, the accident rate of the 737 Classic+NG (enormous sample size) is at least an order of magnitude lower than for the MAX. If we discount out runway excursions and CFIT accidents (almost always crew error) the difference would be even greater.
This is almost a perfect natural randomised controlled trial, identical crew training, identical safety systems, identical operators with a single variable, the type variant, I'm sure someone far smarter than me with a stat's background on this forum could calculate the probability of 2 MAX accidents being due to something other than the type variant. I suspect the number would be very small, only occurring a small number of times in the lifetime of the universe. Fact the 737 Classic+NG are still flying. Authorities are satisfied with the total operating system of these variants.
No doubt, a statistical analysis of the chances of these accidents being attributable to random crew error vs random aircraft error is so monumentally in favour of an aircraft malfunction, given the natural experiment that had been performed since 1967, the airworthiness authorities felt they had no choice but to had to act. They simply could could afford a third accident, without a monumental blow to public & pilot confidence, not just in the aircraft, but the entire system of aircraft certification.
There, no emotion, a little opinion, mainly just cold hard facts, the regulators act on facts.