The Seattle reference was to post 1747, which has a nice Seattle ring, at least imho.
That said, no argument that anytime one flies, one is exposed to all dimensions of human error, both active and passive. Still, certification is expected to weed out the most sensitive cases, if need be at the expense of efficiency.
Bearfoil makes the case that the pilot had 11 seconds to make the right call once the a/p dropped out. That is in an airplane encountering no extraordinary stresses, at least afwk, in excellent repair, in routine flight and with no serious mechanicals other than the pitot icing. That is scary, at least to me.