Something like Anubis in front of the server to protect it might be an option. It sucks that we have to resort to that yes, but it seems the least bad option currently (better than the entire internet going through Cloudflare at least).
You can just use one line of JS instead
https://fxgn.dev/blog/anubis
You can just use one line of JS instead
https://fxgn.dev/blog/anubis