I would agree. The question for me has never been "does life exist elsewhere". The question for me has always been "what is the probability that we would cross paths with life that existed elsewhere in the universe”.
The universe is basically empty. The entire universe is virtually devoid of any matter. Look to any point in the sky and then extend that line to the end of the universe. The odds are enormous that you will never encounter an object in that path even though there are billions of stars. This is because the universe is spread over time and space.
The odds are staggering against ever encountering another life that is within one or two billion years of our own? We may not even be able to recognize life if it were too many billions of years ahead or behind us.
In my mind the universe may be teeming with life but the odds that we would ever cross paths is indeed remote in the extreme.
I'm amazed at all the rare-earthers that have sprung up. The last time I argued this on FR I was shouted down.
My guess is that the radio civilization will last a couple hundred years, being replaced by who knows what -- entangled quantum particles, perhaps? So the window for crossing paths via SETI is brief indeed. I suspect that live, biological humans will never travel to the stars, although our descendents might.