I'll have to track it down but from what I'd read, the change in handling characteristics was that once the airplane started to pitch up, the pitch-up forces wo

I'll have to track it down but from what I'd read, the change in handling characteristics was that once the airplane started to pitch up, the pitch-up forces would increase, making a stall much more likely if you didn't keep on top of it. So, yes, if you;re actively flying the plane and staying on top of your trim & pitch, keeping it in the middle of the range is just a bit different. But, if it gets out of hand, it gets progressively worse at an increasing rate, which is what MCAS was apparently designed to prevent. Of course, if they'd designed the MCAS with multiple redundant sensors, as well as integrating other data (thrust, accel, GPS trajectory, pilot inputs, etc.) into a complete image, or at least a solid series of sanity checks on then applied it, it could have been a great advance. Instead, they cheaped out, with the result that they added to the design a single point of failure. The result, within a year of its rollout, is 346 people dead.