The one thing in your original post jumped out at me: That given "recent developments" you were thinking of avoiding Thailand.
That woudl be a huge mistake, There's absolutely no reason not to come here and whether you were referring to the political upheavals of a couple months ago or the current worldwide swine flu problem, neither should impact your decision to come to Thaialnd.
The protests, while awful looking on TV, were extremely isoldated from virtually all people. Plus, you wouldn't be in Bangkok anyway. Lots of Bangkokonians wil join me in saying that while protests raged in one small area, life went on as usual elsewhere.