Then again, we Earthlings could be unique in the whole universe
“Earthlings” is not strictly about “humans”, but about every living organism on the planet; that’s the way I interpret the word.
And, we may be unique as the most intelligent species in the entire universe, and we are uniquely human.
Extraterrestrials might exist, but to have evolved in the same fashion as “us”, would have taken mathematically prohibitive statistical challenges.
If “those” extraterrestrials do exist, they probably have or had the same origins; iow, we didn’t originate on this planet or on this sun’s region or on this galaxy. We might just be the accidental castaways from a different galaxy that merged with what we call the Milky Way. IN that sense, we might not be unique, but we might have the same origins and in that sense, we would be unique in that, we and those others in our “original home” are just about “the same”.
BTW, “distance between stars” does not mean that there was not contact in the past few billion years. We, as life, are relatively new to the universe, and it might be that life did start before it came to this region of the Milky Way. But, that life would still be “comparatively” the same as us.