To my understanding, the trim wheels are moving frequently for small adjustments -- and it's possible to switch the wheel movement off if this becomes too annoying.
It's running for 10 seconds at a time for 2.5 units of trim out of a possible ~15. That's quite a big trim change. I find it hard to believe that it's not noticed because of the 'boiling a frog' situation.
It not possible to disable wheel movement. It's mechanically linked to the jackscrew.
Also not a pilot but I don't think you can switch the wheel off. You can, however, disable the electric motors that spin the wheel, which is what the checklist for runaway trim tells you to do, and what was supposed to have been done here.
The spinning wheels are directly connected to the stab trim via cables. If the trim motors fail, the pilots can turn those wheels by hand (there's a folding crank on them) to manually adjust the trim.
