The buck, once more, stops somewhere else. Donald Trump has announced he is suspending funding to the World Health Organization. The attempt to shift blame for his disastrous failure to protect his country, despite repeated warnings from the international body and others, could not be more naked or repugnant: “A crime against humanity,” wrote one critic. The WHO, already run on a shoestring, is having its knees cut from under it as it tackles a pandemic that has already sickened 2 million people, claimed 125,000 lives and wrecked many more.

The US president has charged the WHO with “severely mismanaging and covering up” the outbreak. It declared the coronavirus a public health emergency on 30 January, while Mr Trump played down the outbreak repeatedly, failed to prepare his country and only declared a national emergency on 13 March. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, warned of “alarming levels of inaction” from many countries. So far 25,000 Americans have died.

Mr Trump’s attack is of a piece with his hostility to multilateral organisations, and frequent though inconsistent assaults on China. In January, he praised Beijing’s hard work and transparency regarding the virus. This week, he called the WHO “very China-centric”, though US disengagement will surely make it more so.

The WHO has handled the coronavirus’s emergence more nimbly than it did Ebola, reflecting the reforms made in the wake of that sluggish and inept response. But there is concern about the praise it has lavished on China and its leadership despite the anxieties over human rights, the length of time it took China to confirm human-to-human transmission and the cover-up of the scale and seriousness of the outbreak in Wuhan by authorities, which allowed Covid-19’s spread within China and abroad.

The organisation has treated Taiwan appallingly, thanks to its concern for relations with Beijing. China regards the self-ruled island as a renegade province and has blocked its membership of the body. The leadership cannot change that. But Taipei has accused the WHO of failing to pass on its early warning that the virus might be transmitted between humans. It has dodged questions on Taiwan, and Dr Tedros launched a bizarre attack on the democracy, saying he had received racist slurs from Taiwan and that “the foreign ministry didn’t disassociate” itself from them. (Taiwan says the charge is baseless.)

But suggesting that WHO officials are in thrall to China is a facile explanation. The WHO is a membership organisation, with responsibility but not power. It can try to steer member states, but has no sanctions; without sticks, it relies on carrots. It needs China’s cooperation – not least because the precise origins of coronavirus within Wuhan remain unclear. It took weeks to get WHO investigators into the country. It is also true that China told the WHO of the strange pneumonia cases within a couple of weeks, and its scientists published the virus’s genome sequence by 9 January – a far cry from its months-long cover-up of Sars.

Other countries should press the WHO to think carefully about how enthusiastically it endorses Chinese actions. They should vigorously make the case for Taiwan’s renewed attendance at the World Health Assembly as an observer, even if China will continue to resist. They should foster their own relationships with Taipei, individually and together. Taiwan’s response to the virus has been exemplary; others will benefit from its experience and information.

But they also need to support the WHO. Mr Trump’s unconscionable decision threatens its status, and the ability of public health experts to collaborate internationally without fearing the political consequences. It will punish those most vulnerable to Covid-19. The attacks on the WHO and China from the US, the UK and elsewhere reflect not only anger at Beijing’s responsibility for this pandemic, and a belief that coronavirus has exposed the state’s essential nature, but also a wish to divert attention from unpardonable failings by western governments. They, too, must take responsibility.