"First in this galaxy is plausible. First in the universe is less likely."
This statement is false: we can't make any meaningful statement about the likelihood of extraterrestrial life.
In our minds, the large number of stars in the universe is close to infinity, leading to the fallacious perception that everything imaginable must be out there somewhere. But the amount of matter out there is finite and the probability for emergence of life is finite and completely unknown. The resulting probability for extraterrestrial life is therefore unknown and could be anything between 1 and 0. Pick any number, it's completely meaningless.
Statements about the probability of extraterrestrial life is pure, baseless speculation. We don't understand enough about the origin of life to make any meaningful estimations.