But it doesn't matter that in the entire universe there are tons because anything outside of our galaxy might as well not exist when you're talking about communication / contact.
So just focusing on the galaxy, even if life arises on every planet where it is capable, it's not going to be common. The planets with life on them will be few and far between. And as I said, based on our evidence, not even all (or any necessarily) of those will have intelligent life.
No - the whole point of the article is that they're not. Sure, it's a tiny proportion of planets. But in an unimaginably vast universe, there have got to be billions of them - and while there would surely be aliens who study some other civilizations, once you've seen a few million human-level civilizations you've seen them all. Analogy: even though four-leaf clover are rare and interesting as clover go, still the vast majority of four-leaf clover in the world have never been examined by a human.