Mine is probably the most boring: There are many intelligent species in the universe. Faster-than-light travel, however, really is simply impossible, meaning that there cannot exist a truly interstellar civilization. So while some species have probably settled solar systems other than their own through generation ships, suspended animation, time dilation, or whatever, their range of expansion is limited. This means that encounters between species of different planets are rare. Humans will most likely never contact any intelligent alien species, at most one or two. We might, however, discover evidence of their existence through telescopes or something.
I love that last sentence.
But, your solution to the Fermi Paradox is essentially that they aren't interested in us and we aren't smart enough to figure out where they are. Which, fair. But that is just a hypothesis that is untestable. There is no way for us to know if that is true, just like we can't prove if God exists. So, it's a neat idea, but kinda useless for solving the Fermi Paradox.
There's also the issue that life wouldn't have formed just 8 billion years ago. It would be evolving right now. On another planet, it would have evolved till human intelligence a million years before we did. On another, a billion years. Or really, any number between 0 to 8 billion years. Which means, just like life on Earth, life in the Milky Way would be in multiple stages.
Maybe the ones that are 8 billion years old have achieved nirvana and don't care about Earth, aren't curious about humanity, and don't want to harvest our Sun for energy. But can the same be said for species that are only a million years older than us?
Hell, Alpha Centauri is only 4 light years away from us, and there's a planet in the habitable zone there. So they would just need to travel a maximum of 4,000 years to reach us (if they can travel at the speed of our fastest probe). I mean, there are a bunch of other planets close enough to have life that has had enough time to reach us and that may be close to us in their evolutionary stage. That's the Fermi Paradox, if there is life anywhere else, why haven't we discovered it? Even if we're like bacteria to the Great Ones, there have to be other bacteria for whom we are food. **Where are they? **
ALSO, I wouldn't dismiss anyone for thinking UFOs are real. They might be. I hope they are.
After some thinking I don't really have an answer for the rest of your points on the Fermi Paradox, so fair enough.
Guess I'll just go all in on the UFOs then and point out the following: per this excellent paper (https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/21/10/939/htm) going over a number of quite credible UFO sightings that are - at minimum - radar-visual sightings, the objects in question displayed acceleration sufficient for interstellar travel by way of exploiting relativistic effects.
Even the slowest estimated acceleration among the objects would be able to (from their perspective) get from TRAPPIST-1 to here in only 58 days, and from Proxima Centuari to here in only 43. The highest acceleration observed, 5000 g, would mean that (from their perspective) it would take 1.4 days to get from Proxima Centauri to here, and 1.7 to get here from TRAPPIST-1.
If the sighted objects are aliens flying around, then if they didn't care about the timeskips (and there's many reasons they might not, maybe they don't age, maybe they're automated drones or robots, maybe they're nomadic, etc) that's a very workable speed for interstellar travel.
Ooh that paper looks exciting. Imma go give that a read. Thanks!